Google last month announced the deprecation of Structured Data Files v9, v9.1, and v9.2, setting a single sunset date of January 28, 2027, for all three versions used to manage bulk campaign data within Display & Video 360. The notice, posted through the Google Ads Developer Blog and signed by Trevor Mulchay of the Display & Video 360 API Team, gives advertisers and partners roughly seven months to migrate to Structured Data Files v10 or a later version before uploads in the retiring formats stop being accepted.

Structured Data Files, commonly abbreviated as SDF, function as the bulk data interface for Display & Video 360. Advertisers and agencies use these comma-separated value files to create, update, and manage campaigns, insertion orders, line items, and other resources at scale rather than editing each item individually inside the platform's user interface. Because large advertisers frequently rely on custom integrations built around specific SDF schemas, a version change of this kind carries direct operational consequences for how bulk uploads and downloads are processed.

What changes and when

According to the Ads Developer Blog, the deprecation notice sets out two changes that take effect the day after the sunset date. First, any partner or advertiser account still configured to use v9, v9.1, or v9.2 as its default version will be automatically switched to v10. Second, any sdfdownloadtasks.create request that specifies SDF_VERSION_9, SDF_VERSION_9_1, or SDF_VERSION_9_2 in its request body will return a 400 error rather than generating a file. In practice, this means integrations that have not updated their version parameter will begin failing outright once the sunset takes hold, rather than continuing to function on outdated logic.

The blog post directs developers toward two resources for the transition: the SDF v10 Migration Guide, and the enumerated schema differences between each deprecated version and v10, both hosted within Google's Display & Video 360 API developer documentation. Google's v10 reference documentation for the Campaign file type - one of several resource types covered under the SDF schema, alongside Insertion Order, Line Item, Ad Group, Ad, Inventory Source, and Media Product - lists dozens of fields governing budget, targeting, frequency capping, and Mediaocean-specific invoicing segments, illustrating the depth of configuration that a version migration can touch. Fields such as Campaign Budget Segments carry list-of-lists formatting requirements, where each budget segment record specifies its own type, amount, flight dates, and, where applicable, Prisma billing codes tied to Mediaocean integrations.

Questions about the migration can be directed to the Google Advertising and Measurement Community Discord server, the same channel Google expanded to cover DV360 API, SDF, and Bid Manager API discussions in March 2026, as PPC Land reported at the time.

A familiar pattern of version churn

Today's announcement extends a deprecation cadence that has defined the SDF product for several years. Google discontinued SDF v5.5 on October 3, 2024, redirecting affected users toward v7. Roughly four months later, on July 30, 2024, Google separately announced the deprecation of SDF v6, which carried its own sunset date of April 30, 2025, and required a shift to v7 or higher. That sunset date arrived on schedule, and the platform's July 2025 API update formally removed v6 support, alongside the sunset of Display & Video 360 API v3 on October 7, 2025.

The version history since then has moved quickly. SDF v7 launched in November 2023 with updated column ID spaces and new YouTube Target Frequency settings. Version 7.1 followed in mid-2024 alongside the SDF QA format, a read-only, human-readable file type that reached general availability on August 12, 2024. SDF v8 arrived on October 28, 2024, bringing comprehensive support for Demand Gen resources - a campaign type that had only entered Display & Video 360 the previous month. Version 8.1 followed in March 2025 with granular inventory source controls for Demand Gen line items, moving certain targeting decisions from the line item level down to the ad group level.

SDF v9 itself carries particular regulatory weight. According to prior Ads Developer Blog documentation, v9 became mandatory starting September 8, 2025, when Google began requiring a "Contains EU Political Ads" column on new line item entries, set to either YES or NO, as part of compliance with the European Union's Regulation 2024/900 on political advertising transparency. That mandate arrived just ahead of the regulation's October 10, 2025, effective date, and it explains why v9 adoption became widespread relatively quickly: advertisers running any EU-facing line items had little choice but to move onto it. Versions 7.1, 8, and 8.1 were deprecated in parallel, with support ending March 3, 2026.

Version 9.1 reached general availability on September 17, 2025, introducing configuration options that let Demand Gen line items apply certain targeting parameters either at the line item level or the ad group level, along with a new Combined Audience Targeting column for ad group files. That release also removed the Bid Multipliers column from line items and eliminated the Measure DAR and Measure DAR Channel columns from insertion order files - changes that reflected, according to the announcement at the time, a broader shift toward automated bid management rather than manual multiplier settings. SDF v9.2 followed within the Display & Video 360 API's October 2025 update, announced October 27, 2025, though that update's documentation did not detail specific feature additions unique to v9.2, instead pairing the version bump with broader additions such as AdGroupAd retrieval and expanded ad policy visibility fields.

Seen against that backdrop, today's deprecation of v9, v9.1, and v9.2 together, rather than staggered individually, suggests Google is treating the three as a single generational cohort now that v10 has superseded them. Whereas the v6 sunset carried a roughly nine-month runway and the SDF v7 deprecation gave developers approximately six weeks, this notice provides close to seven months of lead time, placing it closer to the more generous end of Google's recent deprecation timelines.

Why this affects bulk operations teams specifically

Structured Data Files exist because Display & Video 360's user interface does not scale efficiently for advertisers managing large numbers of campaigns, insertion orders, and line items simultaneously. Bulk operations teams - often centralized functions inside holding companies or large in-house programmatic teams - depend on the ability to download a current SDF, make changes in a spreadsheet or through automated scripts, and re-upload the file to apply those changes across potentially thousands of resources at once.

That dependency also makes SDF version transitions more consequential than typical software updates. Because Google explicitly warns that requests using the deprecated version strings will return a 400 error after the sunset date, any pipeline that hardcodes SDF_VERSION_9, SDF_VERSION_9_1, or SDF_VERSION_9_2 into its API calls will fail outright rather than degrade gracefully. Google's own documentation states plainly that this default-version reassignment happens automatically for accounts that have not migrated, which limits - but does not eliminate - the risk of a hard failure for teams that rely solely on the platform's default settings rather than explicit version parameters in their integration code.

The stakes are compounded by the sheer size of the SDF schema. Google's Partial Structured Data File Upload feature, introduced on May 5, 2026, was built specifically to address the fact that standard Line Item SDFs require more than 120 columns to be present in every uploaded file, regardless of how few fields an advertiser actually intends to change. That existing complexity means a version migration is rarely a matter of updating a single parameter; it typically requires reviewing schema differences column by column, testing updated logic against sample files, and validating that automated pipelines correctly interpret any renamed, removed, or newly required fields in v10.

The technical shape of v10

Google's published reference documentation for the Campaign resource under SDF v10 outlines the scope of fields advertisers must account for when migrating. Required fields include the advertiser ID, campaign name, status (Active, Paused, or Archived), campaign goal, campaign goal KPI, and campaign start date, formatted as MM/DD/YYYY HH:mm. Frequency capping fields - Frequency Enabled, Frequency Exposures, Frequency Period, and Frequency Amount - become conditionally required once frequency capping is turned on, with a hard constraint that frequency cap time periods cannot exceed 30 days.

Campaign Budget Segments, an optional but structurally complex field, illustrates how deeply nested SDF data can become. Each segment record follows a list format specifying ID, name, type (Amount or Impressions), amount, start date, end date, external budget source, external budget ID, invoice grouping ID, and, for Mediaocean-sourced segments specifically, Prisma client code, product code, estimate code, type, and supplier. Only Mediaocean budget segments can populate the Prisma-specific fields, and Google's documentation notes that Google Payments Center supports searching and filtering based on those codes - a detail relevant to finance and billing teams working alongside programmatic operations.

None of this schema detail is unique to today's announcement; it reflects the existing v10 structure that has been publicly documented and is now the required destination for anyone still running v9, v9.1, or v9.2. What changes with today's notice is the deadline by which that migration becomes mandatory rather than optional.

Context for the marketing industry

For an industry that has spent more than two years absorbing successive SDF version changes, the practical significance of today's announcement lies less in any single new feature and more in the discipline it imposes on bulk operations planning. As PPC Land has tracked across the SDF version history, Google has moved through versions 5.5, 6, 7, 7.1, 8, 8.1, 9, 9.1, and 9.2 in a span of roughly three years, with each version carrying its own deprecation clock once superseded. Organizations that treat SDF migrations reactively - waiting until close to a sunset date - risk compressed testing windows, particularly when a single migration can touch dozens of interdependent fields across multiple resource types.

The compliance dimension adds a further layer of consequence specific to this version cohort. Because v9 became mandatory for EU political advertising declarations in September 2025, and both v9.1 and v9.2 layered additional Demand Gen and asset-management functionality on top of that compliance baseline, advertisers migrating away from these versions must verify that whatever replaces them in v10 preserves the EU political ads declaration behavior without regression. Google's documentation frames v10 migration as a schema comparison exercise against v9, v9.1, and v9.2 individually, which suggests the underlying EU compliance columns carry forward rather than change, though affected teams will need to confirm that directly against the migration guide rather than assume continuity.

Trade publications covering the DV360 API ecosystem have also noted that Google's shift toward centralizing developer support - consolidating DV360 API, SDF, and Bid Manager API discussions into a single Discord server in March 2026 - has changed how deprecation notices circulate within the developer community, moving away from public forums and toward a chat-based channel that lacks native RSS subscription support. That shift means bulk operations teams monitoring for exactly this kind of deprecation notice may need to actively check the Discord server or the Ads Developer Blog directly, rather than relying on automated feed readers that served the same purpose under Google's previous public forum structure.

Timeline

  • October 3, 2024 - SDF v5.5 support ends; users redirected to v7
  • July 30, 2024 - Google announces deprecation of SDF v6, setting an April 30, 2025 sunset date
  • August 12, 2024 - SDF QA format reaches general availability
  • October 28, 2024 - SDF v8 launches with Demand Gen resource support
  • March 2025 - SDF v8.1 introduces granular inventory source controls for Demand Gen line items
  • April 30, 2025 - SDF v6 sunsets; default version updated to v7 or higher
  • September 8, 2025 - SDF v9 becomes mandatory for declaring EU political ads on new line item entries
  • September 17, 2025 - SDF v9.1 reaches general availability
  • October 27, 2025 - SDF v9.2 introduced as part of the Display & Video 360 API's October 2025 update
  • March 3, 2026 - SDF versions 7.1, 8, and 8.1 sunset
  • May 5, 2026 - Google launches Partial Structured Data File Upload for line items
  • June 29, 2026 - Google announces deprecation of SDF v9, v9.1, and v9.2, effective January 28, 2027
  • January 28, 2027 - Scheduled sunset date for SDF v9, v9.1, and v9.2

Summary

Who: Google's Display & Video 360 API Team, represented by Trevor Mulchay, issued the deprecation notice. It affects all Display & Video 360 partners and advertisers currently using Structured Data Files v9, v9.1, or v9.2 for bulk campaign management.

What: Google is deprecating three Structured Data Files versions - v9, v9.1, and v9.2 - with a single sunset date. After that date, accounts defaulting to those versions will be automatically switched to v10, and API requests specifying the deprecated version strings will return a 400 error instead of processing.

When: The deprecation was announced on June 29, 2026, with the sunset date set for January 28, 2027, giving affected users roughly seven months to migrate.

Where: The change applies within the Display & Video 360 platform, affecting both the user interface and the Display & Video 360 API's structured data file upload and download functionality.

Why: Google is retiring three SDF versions that have been superseded by v10, continuing a multi-year pattern of periodic SDF version deprecations. SDF v9 in particular carried mandatory EU political advertising declaration requirements introduced in September 2025, meaning today's deprecation requires affected advertisers to confirm that compliance behavior carries forward correctly once they migrate to v10.