Google Ads API v22 stops working in October. Moving to v25 took us a day

Short answer: version 22 of the Google Ads API reaches its sunset in October 2026, and the email Google sent Climent Media gave 7 October. After that date, requests to v22 fail. Moving the Climent Ads Assistant MCP to v25 changed 2 of the 197 fields it reads, plus one number in its reports that no release note mentioned. The switch went live on 21 September, the day the work started.

What did Google’s emails of 14 September say?

Three messages from Google reached the same inbox that day, each written like a routine announcement. I pasted them into a working session a week later with one line: I don’t know what we have to do, or how.

Which Google Ads API version should you move to?

The newest one you can test. Moving from v22 to v23 costs about the same work as moving to v25, and v23 goes away in February 2027. Version 25 lasts until August 2027.

Dates from Google’s deprecation and sunset page, last updated on 23 September 2026. The table leaves out the minor versions, such as v25.1, which the page lists. And the page is plain about what a sunset means:

“Requests sent to this version will fail on or after the sunset date.”

Google Ads API documentation, Deprecation and sunset, read on 28 September 2026.

How do you see which version your project calls?

In the Google Cloud Console, open APIs and Services, then Google Ads API, then the Metrics tab. The Methods table names each call with its version inside, such as google.ads.googleads.v25.services.GoogleAdsService.Mutate. In our case the version lived in one place: an environment variable that the service and a separate daily script both read.

What did the move from v22 to v25 actually take?

Less than I feared, and more than reading the release notes. In the order it happened:

• A census of everything that calls the API. The service, the nightly import and a separate daily script. All of them read the version from the same environment file, so the switch itself was one line.
• Every field we request, checked against Google’s own definitions. 197 fields, compared with the published definitions of v22 and v25. Two had gone: campaign.start_date and campaign.end_date, replaced since v23 by start_date_time and end_date_time, which carry a time of day. We read both before every change a person approves, so without the fix, approvals would have stopped working.
• The same closed day, read three times. v22, then v25, then v22 again, on every Google connection that was working that day. Of the 19 datasets the night reads, all came back identical except one.
• The calls the night does not make. Change history, search terms, account discovery and the keyword planner, among others: 11 calls tested live on both versions, with 0 differences and 0 failures.
• The switch. One line in the environment file, with a copy, a check that nothing else changed, a restart and a way back.

The diagnosis was ready 23 minutes after I pasted the emails, and the service was talking v25 at 17:45 UTC the same day. The last step was mine: the session’s permissions would not let it write to the production environment file, so I ran the script myself.

Which difference did the release notes not mention?

Performance Max. With v22, its traffic came back under a single network value, MIXED. With v25, the same traffic came back split by channel: SEARCH, YOUTUBE, CONTENT and DISCOVER. Campaign by campaign, impressions, clicks and cost added up to exactly the same totals. Only ratios such as cost per click by network moved.

The split is not a broken read. It is a finer one. But a report whose window crosses the switch date shows the same Performance Max traffic counted two ways, and that looks like a change in the account. The Climent Ads Assistant MCP now says so in the description it gives the model for that field, so an answer that crosses the date can warn about it.

Was it just a matter of handing the AI the documentation?

Partly. The documentation says what changed in the API. It cannot say what changes in your reports, because it doesn’t know which fields you read or how you add them up. What made this a one-day job for Climent Ads Assistant was measuring against its own data: the same day read on both versions, account by account. Without that, the Performance Max split would have reached a client report as a real change.

The token change, on the other hand, took nothing at all. Google had moved our Basic access to the right project before any of us had read the email.

What I still don’t know

Whether v26, due in October 2026, removes anything we read. The check will be the same: our fields against the new definitions, and the same day read on both versions.

And exactly when a developer token in the header stops being accepted. Google’s email to developers says releases expected in the first half of 2027 will reject it. Our code still sends it, and taking it out is on the list.

Questions people actually ask

Related reading

• Google Ads API access after the developer token. Access levels, OAuth, the one scope that also writes, and what the new policy means for a public MCP.
• Google Ads change history: who changed what. One of the calls we checked on both versions, and the 30-day limit every tool inherits.
• Connect your AI to your ad data. The three ways to get an assistant to your numbers, including the ones that are not ours.

Last updated: September 2026