The Content API for Shopping will sunset on August 18, 2026, to be replaced by the Merchant API. This migration provides a shift toward more robust, scalable, and feature-rich integrations. For Google Ads scripts users, the Google Ads scripts editor will begin rolling out Merchant API support on April 22, 2026. While the Content API for Shopping will remain available until its sunset, here’s what to expect from the Merchant API.

Understanding the Merchant API

The Merchant API offers important changes and improvements over the Content API for Shopping:

• Modular Design: The Merchant API is broken down into sub-APIs. This allows for:
  • Faster access to new features and updates.
  • Easier versioning and maintenance.
  • Reduced disruption, as changes in one sub-API are less likely to impact others.
• New Features & Capabilities:
  • Google Product Studio API: Leverage generative AI features.
  • Reviews APIs: Upload and manage product and store reviews.
  • Notifications API: Enable notifications for changes.
  • Expanded Data Source Management: Create and manage various data source types, including:
    • Supplemental product data
    • Local inventory data
    • Regional inventory data
    • Promotion data
• Omnichannel Support: Designed with Omnichannel in mind, though it provides backward compatibility for legacy separate online/local offer structures using the legacy_local flag.

Take a look at the Merchant API migration guide for more detail on the changes between APIs.

How to get started

The Merchant API will be available as an Advanced API in the Google Ads scripts editor, just as the Content API is.

If you have any questions or want to discuss this post, please reach out to us on our “Google Advertising and Measurement Community” Discord server.

 - Dora Sun - Google Ads API Team

Today we're announcing the release of the Merchant API Beta. This is the newest version of the Content API for Shopping which comes with exciting new features. The Merchant API is a redesign of the Content API for Shopping which can help you showcase your products with new features, modular design with isolated sub-API updates, and improved alignment with Google's API improvement proposals. We invite you to try out the Merchant API Beta to provide early feedback so we can improve the Merchant API for you.

For more information, we highly recommend reviewing the launch status for Merchant API Beta expectations and see the following sections.

Highlights:
You can find a complete list of features in the release notes in the GRPC/REST reference sections and accompanying compatibility guides, but here are the highlights:

• Sub APIs with new features at launch: We are excited to announce an initial set of sub apis which comes with new features:
  • Data Sources: Allows multiple API feed creation and management, improved management of supplemental feeds via creation with linking to primary feeds, and support for other shopping feeds such as promotions.
  • Notifications: Receive push notifications for changes to a given account and product data.
  • Products: Unifying Product & ProductStatuses resources to streamline your workflow, new functionality to support inserting products into non API data sources.
  • Inventory: Improved management with the ability to remove in-store or regional inventories for your products.
  • Accounts: New terms of signing (ToS) functionality via the API and accessing account issues with multi-language support.
  • Local Feeds Partnership: For Point-of-sale data providers, more granular inventory management with availability status submissions and feed labels for inventory.
  • Promotions: Simplified promotion statuses with improved details and support for custom promotion attributes for faster iterations on new features.
  • Quota: Additional fields such as version, sub-api, and adjustments visible through the API to manage your quotas more efficiently.
  • Reports: A new NonProductPerformanceView table which provides insights into non-product performance data such as data on links leading to merchants’ homepage.
• Merchant API is the future. Going forward, we will start launching new features primarily for the Merchant API which will have the newest Merchant Center features. We recommend you start using the Merchant API and would love to hear your feedback to help shape the future.
• More features are on the way! Today's release contains many new improvements. Currently, there isn’t feature completeness between the Content API and Merchant API. We will have more features upcoming which are based on establishing parity, your feedback, and completely new features such as creation of file feeds with the Data source Merchant API.

Learn more and check out the following resources:

• Access our Merchant API developer website to discover the Merchant API.
• Review our Quickstart guide and Compatibility guides: to ramp up your understanding with how to start your integration with the Merchant API.
• Learn more with our Merchant API release notes in the GRPC/REST reference sections to view our launched and future new features.
• Check out our new Client Libraries and Samples to help speed up your implementations.
• Contact our API support team for any issues or questions.
• Help shape the future by providing feedback: Submit any feedback or suggestions.

Benji Rothman, on behalf of the Content API for Shopping Team