On April 2, 2026, Google published the second episode of Ads DevCast - its developer-focused video podcast - dedicating the full runtime to the Data Manager API and what it means for teams currently managing audience and conversion data across multiple separate integrations. The episode, titled "Many to 1: Audience Management in Data Manager API," features Melissa Ng, the product manager for Data Manager API at Google, speaking with host Cory Liseno from the Google Ads Developer Relations team.

The timing of the episode matters. April 1, 2026 - one day before publication - was the hard deadline for Customer Match uploads to stop working through the Google Ads API. As PPC Land reported on March 4, 2026, Google had already notified developers that any Customer Match upload via OfflineUserDataJobService or UserDataService would fail from that date forward. The Ads DevCast episode lands directly in that context: it is as much a migration briefing as it is a product introduction.

What the Data Manager API actually does

At its core, the Data Manager API is a single ingestion endpoint for first-party data. Instead of sending audience lists to the Google Ads API, conversion data through a separate service, and Display and Video 360 audiences through yet another integration, developers can send all of that through one API call and have it fan out to multiple downstream destinations.

According to Ng, the unified schema is one of the most practically significant aspects of the system. Under the old architecture, each Google product had its own field names and requirements. A field like "transaction ID" could mean something subtly different depending on which product pipeline received it. The Data Manager API enforces one schema across Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Analytics. That consistency, Ng noted, also makes adding new use cases significantly faster. A team already sending offline conversion data through the API will find it much easier to add support for offline conversion adjustments or enhanced conversions for web - because the endpoint and schema remain the same.

The API supports both REST and gRPC protocols. It covers three primary audience data types: Customer Match audience members, mobile device identifiers, and Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation identifiers. On the conversion side, it handles offline conversions, enhanced conversions for leads, and conversion events used as supplementary signals for tag-based tracking. PPC Land's coverage of the December 9, 2025 launch provides a detailed technical breakdown of those data types and the authentication requirements, which use OAuth 2.0 with the datamanager scope.

The migration pressure

The Ads DevCast episode makes the urgency explicit. According to Ng, the Customer Match API in Google Ads is no longer accepting new developers or advertisers. Anyone who wants to begin using Customer Match programmatically must now integrate directly with the Data Manager API. The sunset date for existing Customer Match API users was described as TBD at the time of recording, but Ng indicated that date "is coming soon" and that data partners have already been formally notified of a March 2027 deadline to complete their migrations.

DV360 audience ingestion via the legacy API faces a separate shutdown, also set for 2027.

For developers who have not uploaded Customer Match data via their developer token in the past 180 days, the April 1 deadline had an immediate effect - those integrations began failing from day one, not after a grace period. That detail, reported by PPC Land ahead of the deadline, created particular urgency for agencies and marketing technology vendors running legacy implementations on behalf of clients who had not been actively uploading.

The migration itself involves concrete technical steps. Developers must establish OAuth 2.0 credentials with the datamanager scope and set up a Google Cloud project to serve as the access foundation. The API enforces rate limits of 100,000 requests per day and 300 requests per minute per Cloud project. Individual requests can carry up to 10,000 audience members, each with up to 10 user identifiers. An earlier episode of this migration story - the January 2026 block on session attribute and IP address imports through the Google Ads API - followed the same architectural logic: complex, privacy-sensitive, high-volume data operations belong in the infrastructure built for them.

Confidential matching and privacy architecture

One of the features exclusive to the Data Manager API - and unavailable through the legacy Google Ads API pathway - is confidential matching. Ng described it in the episode as a form of privacy enhancing technology that operates inside a trusted execution environment, a specific category of hardware designed so that even the system administrator cannot access the data being processed.

According to Ng, "we think privacy should be table stakes at this point, so we implement confidential matching out of the box for anyone using Data Manager API to send in their first-party data signals for customer match."

The mechanism works as follows. When personally identifiable information is transmitted to Google - whether hashed or encrypted - it enters a trusted execution environment where only that isolated machine can decrypt and match it against Google's identity space. The output is only the IDs that Google already knows. No raw customer data exits the environment. Importantly, the system provides what Ng described as technical attestation - a verifiable confirmation that the confidential matching process operated exactly as designed.

Encryption is an additional option layered on top. The API accepts data encrypted using XChaCha20-Poly1305 algorithms, with wrapped data encryption keys secured by either Google Cloud Platform or Amazon Web Services key management systems. That dual-cloud-support detail is notable for teams whose infrastructure does not run entirely within Google Cloud.

What engineers actually saved

The episode's most concrete evidence of real-world impact comes from Treasure Data, identified by Ng as one of the first integration partners. PPC Land reported at the time of the API's December 2025 launch that Treasure Data had previously maintained separate integrations for Google Ads Customer Match, Google Analytics audiences, and DV360 audience management. After consolidating onto the Data Manager API, the company reported an 80 percent reduction in engineering effort and twice-as-fast advertiser onboarding.

Ng cited these figures again in the episode and connected them to a broader point about how the fragmented legacy architecture had been generating hidden costs. According to Ng, "anecdotally, one of our larger advertisers told us that they spend over $1 million per year just on maintenance alone" - covering schema management, required updates, and troubleshooting across the separate API pipelines. Whether that figure is representative of the broader advertiser population is impossible to verify independently, but it illustrates the kind of overhead that accumulates when multiple product-specific APIs each require their own implementations.

Ng also noted a secondary benefit for data partners that had previously offered only Customer Match uploads. After integrating with the Data Manager API, some of those partners were able to expand into conversion tracking - a capability they had previously been unable to offer because of the separate integration barriers. That expansion represents additional revenue potential for technology vendors, not just operational savings.

Diagnostics and the UI layer

The episode placed particular emphasis on a feature that is perhaps less discussed than the API itself: the Data Manager UI, now available inside Google Ads under the Tools section. Liseno, speaking from direct experience with developer feedback, described troubleshooting audience and conversion management issues as one of the most time-consuming support burdens developers currently face.

The UI provides rolled-up daily stats, health indicators for API connections, and diagnostic information - both for teams that have integrated the Data Manager API directly and for advertisers receiving data from a partner that has integrated on their behalf. According to Ng, this will be the first time API statistics have been surfaced inside the Google Ads interface in this way. The initial rollout covers conversion diagnostics, with audience diagnostics to follow.

For developers not working inside the UI, the API itself includes a Status API that allows programmatic checks on the state of requests and surfaces asynchronous errors associated with uploads. That combination - a UI layer for business stakeholders and a programmatic status endpoint for developers - addresses a gap that has historically required reaching out to Google support to diagnose upstream failures.

What is coming in the rest of 2026

Ng outlined the roadmap for the remainder of the year. The stated goal is full use-case parity with all Google advertising stores by the end of 2026. That includes store sales in Google Ads, event conversion support in Google Marketing Platform products, and app support in Google Analytics - additions Ng said were coming "this quarter" at the time of the April 2 recording.

Additional investments are planned in the Status API and error messaging systems, with the aim of giving customers more proactive visibility into data health and automated notification when problems arise. A developer community on Discord is also in preparation, with Google's developer relations team to be present there.

It is worth noting what the roadmap implies for teams sitting on working legacy pipelines. Ng acknowledged the common developer objection directly: if the current integration functions, why invest in rewriting it? The answer she offered had two parts. First, new advertising attribution features and targeting capabilities will only be available through the Data Manager API going forward. Second, the unified schema creates extensibility that the current fragmented architecture does not - adding a new conversion type to an existing Data Manager API integration requires far less work than building a new service integration from scratch under the Google Ads API model.

The context from PPC Land's coverage of Google's audience threshold reduction in December 2025 is relevant here. As Google lowered the minimum audience size for Customer Match targeting to 100 users, it simultaneously made the Data Manager API the only viable path for new Customer Match implementations. The two moves are part of the same strategic direction: expanding access to first-party data activation while concentrating the technical infrastructure for that activation in one place.

The broader pattern is consistent with changes Google has been making across its API portfolio. The January 2026 block on session attributes and IP address imports in the Google Ads API applied the same principle. So did the December 2025 launch of the Merchant API with its August 2026 shutdown date for the Content API for Shopping. Across multiple product lines, Google is replacing general-purpose APIs with purpose-built successors and setting firm deprecation timelines.

For marketing technology vendors, agencies, and in-house engineering teams still operating on the older audience management infrastructure, the Ads DevCast episode serves as a direct statement of where Google's product investment is going - and where it is not.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Google's product and developer relations teams, represented by product manager Melissa Ng and Ads DevCast host Cory Liseno, addressing developers, agencies, data partners, and marketing technology vendors working with Google's advertising APIs.

What: The second episode of Google's Ads DevCast podcast provides a detailed briefing on the Data Manager API - a unified ingestion endpoint for audience and conversion data across Google Ads, Display and Video 360, Campaign Manager 360, and Google Analytics. The episode covers technical architecture, privacy features including confidential matching in a trusted execution environment, migration timelines, the new Data Manager UI diagnostics layer, and a 2026 roadmap targeting full use-case parity.

When: The episode was published on April 2, 2026, one day after the April 1 hard cutoff for Customer Match uploads via the legacy Google Ads API pathway.

Where: The episode is available on the Google Ads Developers YouTube channel and as a podcast. The Data Manager UI is accessible inside Google Ads under the Tools section. Migration documentation, code samples, and GitHub tutorials are available through Google's developer documentation.

Why: Google is consolidating fragmented first-party data infrastructure into a single purpose-built API, replacing separate integrations for Google Ads Customer Match, DV360 audiences, and conversion tracking. The migration is driven by privacy requirements - confidential matching and encryption are only available through the Data Manager API - and by the operational costs documented by partners: Treasure Data reported 80 percent engineering effort reduction and twice-as-fast advertiser onboarding after consolidating onto the new API. New advertising attribution features will be exclusive to the Data Manager API going forward.

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