Google Ads API v25 is live. Check your lifecycle goals, Demand Gen settings, and reporting queries.

Google shipped Google Ads API v25 on July 22, 2026.

This is a major version release, so unlike the smaller v24.2 update, there are breaking changes. Nothing dramatic if you are only clicking around in the Google Ads UI. But if you have scripts, dashboards, budget pacing tools, lifecycle reporting, planning workflows, or agency tooling built on the API, this one needs a real review.

Three parts matter most:

First, Google updated customer lifecycle goal handling, including New Customer Acquisition Goals and the new Loyalty Retention Goal.

Second, Demand Gen gets more creative automation, including generated animated images from existing assets.

Third, reporting and planning fields changed, especially around YouTube, Performance-style reporting, benchmarks, and forecasting requests.

None of that sounds urgent until a dashboard breaks, a field disappears, or a client asks why a lifecycle report changed.

What actually shipped

A few pieces are worth tracking.

First, Loyalty Retention Goal support is now available. This lets advertisers optimize campaigns around retaining loyalty program members, with account-level settings and campaign-specific overrides.

Second, New Customer Acquisition Goal support moved further into Google's newer unified goals schema. The older customer lifecycle goal resources and services are being removed. The replacement logic now runs through the Goal resource and CampaignGoalConfig.

Third, Demand Gen multi-asset ads now support GENERATE_ANIMATED_IMAGES_FROM_OTHER_ASSETS. Starting in v25, new Demand Gen multi-asset ads are opted in by default.

Fourth, YouTube reporting gets more granular. Google added metrics for:

• youtube_comments
• youtube_likes
• youtube_shares

There is also a new ad_sub_format_type segment for breaking out YouTube instream non-skippable ads by duration.

Fifth, planning and forecasting requests changed. Some older fields are gone or replaced, including search_brand, plannable_location_id, and cookie_frequency_cap.

That is the part most teams will skim past and then regret later.

Why the lifecycle goal changes matter

If you run Google Ads accounts for ecommerce, lead gen, subscriptions, or membership businesses, customer lifecycle reporting is usually where the messy stuff lives.

Everyone wants to know:

• are we acquiring new customers or recycling existing ones?
• are high-value customers being treated differently?
• is retention being measured separately from acquisition?
• are campaigns optimizing toward the right customer type?

Google is clearly trying to clean this up inside the API.

The old lifecycle goal resources are being removed. New Customer Acquisition now sits under the newer goal structure, and Loyalty Retention has its own support.

That is good directionally, but it creates migration work.

If your reporting or automation references older lifecycle goal resources, those references need to be updated. A dashboard might not fail loudly. It may just stop pulling the field you thought it was pulling, or start missing a campaign-level override that now lives somewhere else.

For FOCO-style measurement work, this is exactly the kind of thing that belongs in an account infrastructure audit.

Not because the feature is shiny.

Because lifecycle definitions are one of the easiest places for marketing reports to lie.

What to do now: Search your Google Ads API codebase or connector config for lifecycle goal references. Look for CustomerLifecycleGoal, CampaignLifecycleGoal, older customer acquisition settings, and anything mapping acquisition value or high lifetime value logic. Map those to the newer Goal and CampaignGoalConfig structure before the next reporting refresh catches you off guard.

Why the Demand Gen automation change matters

The Demand Gen update looks small, but the default behavior matters.

Google added an asset automation type that can generate animated images from existing non-animated assets. New Demand Gen multi-asset ads are opted in by default starting with v25.

That is useful if you trust Google's creative automation.

It is risky if nobody on the account realizes it is enabled.

This is especially important for brands with strict creative review, regulated industries, franchise accounts, healthcare, finance, or any client where "Google generated a variation automatically" is not an acceptable surprise.

The issue is not whether the feature is good or bad. The issue is whether your team knows when it is active.

What to do now: Check Demand Gen multi-asset ad settings on accounts where brand control matters. If creative needs approval before going live, make sure generated animated assets fit that process. Add the automation setting to your QA checklist so it is not buried inside the platform.

Why the YouTube reporting changes matter

Google added video-specific social metrics for YouTube and Shorts ads:

• comments
• likes
• shares

These should not suddenly become your main KPI. A like is not a lead. A comment is not revenue.

But they are useful for creative diagnosis.

If two Shorts ads have similar spend and conversion volume, but one is getting much stronger engagement, that is a signal worth keeping in the creative readout. Not as proof of business impact, but as context.

The same goes for the new ad_sub_format_type segment. Breaking out non-skippable YouTube ads by duration gives media teams cleaner reporting on what format actually ran, instead of treating all non-skippable inventory like one bucket.

What to do now: If your reporting pipeline already pulls YouTube campaign, ad group, ad, asset, or video data, add the new metrics where they make sense. Do not dump them into every dashboard. Add them to creative reporting and YouTube-specific analysis where someone will actually use them.

The part most teams will miss

The boring field removals are the actual risk.

Google removed or replaced several fields in planning and forecasting requests. For example:

• search_brand is removed from GenerateCreatorInsightsRequest
• plannable_location_id is replaced by plannable_location_ids
• cookie_frequency_cap is replaced by cookie_frequency_cap_setting

That kind of change hits the weird scripts nobody remembers owning.

The planning pull someone built six months ago. The internal forecast template. The client-specific YouTube insights script. The dashboard query that only runs before QBRs.

Those tools usually do not get maintained until they break.

What to do now: Check any script or connector that touches planning, reach forecasts, creator insights, or benchmark metrics. If the query has a hardcoded field list, assume it needs review.

Reporting pipelines need a schema check

The report still loading does not mean the pipeline is healthy.

That is the uncomfortable part with API changes. A broken field is obvious. A renamed field, type change, or removed resource can create softer problems.

Google changed customer_metrics in benchmark reporting from a generic metrics type to a CustomerMetrics type. That is the kind of thing that can break a transformation layer or quietly change what downstream reports expect.

If you are feeding Google Ads API data into BigQuery, Looker Studio, a media mix model, or client-facing reporting, v25 should trigger a schema review.

What to do now: Run your main Google Ads API extraction against v25 in a test environment before switching production. Check for failed fields, empty columns, changed types, and new enum values. Then document what changed so the reporting explanation is ready before a client asks.

The bottom line for measurement teams

Google Ads API v25 is not just a version bump.

It changes how customer lifecycle goals are handled, adds new retention support, expands YouTube reporting, changes Demand Gen creative automation behavior, and removes older fields that some planning workflows still rely on.

If your team only uses the Google Ads UI, this is probably a light review.

If your team runs reporting, automation, dashboards, or client account tooling through the API, this is a task list.

Check the lifecycle goal migration. Check Demand Gen automation settings. Check YouTube reporting fields. Check planning scripts. Check hardcoded schemas.

The teams that get punished by API releases are usually not the ones doing advanced work.

They are the ones doing advanced work without documentation.

Sources

• https://ads-developers.googleblog.com/2026/07/announcing-v25-of-google-ads-api.html
• https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/release-notes
• https://developers.google.com/google-ads/api/docs/upgrade