How Third Party Apps are getting data without using Adwords Reporting API?

Question

I was trying to develop an automated reporting tool for my company and its very difficult to get the Google API access, being a very large agency we are still not able to get that.

Having said that, when I tried using some other reporting tools, they retrieve all our account reports just by connecting them with one access permission (with google sign-in API).

Any idea how the third party apps are doing it so easily without any API access?

Answer 1

Here is a documentation to help you get started.

The Google Analytics Reporting API v4 is the most advanced programmatic method to access report data in Google Analytics. With the Google Analytics Reporting API, you can:

• Build custom dashboards to display Google Analytics data.
• Automate complex reporting tasks to save time.
• Integrate your Google Analytics data with other business applications.

Currently, here are the languages supported, sample codes were also available.

• Service application (Java, Python, PHP)
• Installed application (Java, Python)
• Web application (PHP, JavaScript)

You have also to take note these reason from the answer in SO post why we need to have access permission:

1. Security. If the end user has your credentials he can log into your google account and have access to all your data.
2. Latency. The API is not intended to be used on page load. If your page loads depend on it it may take a long time to load for your users.
3. Quota. The API has a limited quota that will extinguish fast if you query it every time a user enters your website.
4. Design. Ultimately, the API was designed to be used by yourself extracting data offline not in real time by others.