Integrate with Google Ad Manager as a third party

Third parties are not direct users of Ad Manager in that they might not have their own Ad Manager network. Instead, they create services or integrations with Ad Manager for their clients, who are Ad Manager customers. This guide covers the basics of third-party integrations by providing best practices, tips, and tricks.

This guide assumes you have a working knowledge of the Ad Manager API. If you're unfamiliar with the Ad Manager API, see our getting started documentation.

Get started as a third party

To use the Ad Manager API to access an Ad Manager customer's network, follow the guidelines on this page. No additional approval from Google is required, though note that by accessing or using the Ad Manager API, you agree to the Ad Manager API terms and conditions.

Authentication

Follow our Authentication guide to determine your preferred authentication implementation.

If you use a Service Account, you must ask your client to add the service account to their Ad Manager network.

Discuss with your client what roles and permissions your account should have so that your application can access the data it needs on your client's network.

Test your Ad Manager integration

The recommended testing approach is to create a test network. You don't need an existing Ad Manager account to create a test network.

Test networks cannot serve ads or contain all the features that your clients have available on their production networks. If you need to test against Ad Manager features that are not available on your test network, contact support.

You should be explicit with your clients about what features they need to have available on their production network in order for your application to work properly. Your application should handle cases where features might not exist. It is your client's responsibility to work with their contact at Google to manage features on their network.

Getting support

If you run into issues with your Ad Manager integration, we offer the following support channels depending on your issue. If you have a product-level question, post in the Ad Manager product forums. If you have an API specific question, contact API support.