Google recently announced Shopping Campaign support via the AdWords API. To better understand the new offering, ProgrammableWeb caught up with Eric Tholomé, Google Product Management Director.

First, Tholomé explained the thinking behind the offering, and what value it brings to Google's user base:

"The diversity of advertisers using AdWords around the world is such that it is important that we offer a range of ways for them to manage campaigns, from the simplest campaign creation in the AdWords User Interface, to sophisticated access to campaign management & reporting in the AdWords API. This is also true for advertisers using Product Listing Ads, and as such it was important that we offer Shopping campaign creation and management in the AdWords API."

As with many many Google offerings, the target audience for Shopping Campaign support is wide. Tholomé summarized the target strategy:

"Shopping campaign management is a new, retail-centric way to manage and promote products on Google. As such, it is for all advertisers who use (or want to use) Product Listing Ads. The API itself is for those advertisers that have built their own campaign management solution and want to interface with AdWords programmatically, and advertisers who use third party tools, platforms, and services that rely for similar reasons on a programmatic access to AdWords."