On September 23, Google released version 25.2 of the Google Ads API. The API is how reporting dashboards, bid tools, agencies and other custom software read and change Google Ads accounts. You’ll probably never touch it yourself. But the tools you pay for pick up new abilities from releases like this, so it’s worth knowing what’s in it.
Google calls v25.2 a drop-in upgrade for v25. Tools already on v25 can use the new features once they update their code libraries.
Here’s what changed, starting with the parts most likely to matter to a service business.
Alerts when a bidding target is set too tight
The release adds two new recommendations for Search campaigns. They flag when a Target CPA or Target ROAS setting is too low for the campaign to get into auctions.
That’s one of the quieter reasons a campaign slows down. Say, as a made-up example, you set a target of $40 per lead because that’s what you’d like to pay, but the campaign has been averaging $75. Google’s bidding may win far fewer auctions trying to hit a number it can’t reach. Google’s own Target CPA troubleshooting page makes the same point: compare your target with the campaign’s historical average, and if it’s well below, think about raising it.
With v25.2, a reporting tool or agency dashboard can surface that warning automatically instead of someone catching it by hand. Google’s announcement doesn’t say whether the same alert shows up on the Recommendations page in the Ads interface, so it’s worth a look there too.
Before you raise a target, though, bring your own numbers. A $75 lead can be a great deal or a bad one depending on how many of those leads became paying jobs. Glory’s paid advertising and CRM work is built around that comparison, putting cost per lead next to what those leads turned into.
Tracking for each Performance Max asset group
Performance Max campaigns are split into asset groups, often one per service or offer. The Google Ads interface already lets you set a tracking template, final URL suffix and custom parameters on each asset group, according to Google’s help page. v25.2 lets tools set those same options through the API.
In practice, that means each asset group can add its own label to the landing page address. When a lead comes in, you can tell whether it came from the water heater group or the drain cleaning group.
The catch is that the label only helps if your form picks it up and your CRM keeps it on the contact record. Test one lead from each asset group and see whether the label is still there when you open the record.
Where you stand against other advertisers
Google’s benchmarks feature in the API can now show your competitive standing among other advertisers in percentile tiers, meaning a ranking band rather than one exact figure. This mostly matters to reporting tools, and Google’s announcement doesn’t point to a matching screen in the Ads interface.
If your agency starts showing you these numbers, treat them as context. A benchmark tells you how you compare. Your cost per booked job tells you whether the campaign is worth running.
Smart campaigns can become Performance Max drafts
If you still run a Smart campaign, tools can now create a Performance Max draft from it through the API. It’s a draft, so someone still has to review the locations, assets, budget and conversion tracking before it goes live.
The rest of the release
The other additions are narrower: searching YouTube creators by channel handle, and new booking-window and price metrics for hotel and travel advertisers. Most local service businesses can skip those.
One question for your tool or agency
If a reporting tool, bid tool or agency pulls your Google Ads data, ask which API version it runs on. Google’s sunset notice says version 22 stops working on October 7, 2026, and every request to it fails from that day. A tool still on v22 would simply stop getting your data.
Then open your Search campaigns that use Target CPA or Target ROAS. If a target sits far below what the campaign has actually been paying, that’s the setting to revisit first, with your customer numbers in front of you.
Source note: Feature details come from Google’s September 23, 2026 announcement on the Google Ads Developer Blog and its September 2 sunset reminder. Interface details come from Google Ads Help. The $40 and $75 figures are a hypothetical example. The checks are Glory Digital Solutions’ own guidance.