• Trying to modify the name of a campaign to one that is already assigned to another campaign you may encounter the following error messages:

Google

Google Error: Error: GOOGLE, DUPLICATE_NAME, operations[0].operand.name,, it_IT

Microsoft

Error: An attempt was made to create a duplicate of a campaign that already exists.

What Causes The Issue?

There are a number of potential causes, including:

• Attempting to create a campaign that already exists in the publisher or the same campaign name already exists in the publisher.
• When copying campaigns or making large bulk uploads, the campaign will sync to the publisher but it may lose the API call. This causes a disconnect between the two campaigns.
• When selecting all new objects to be posted to the publisher at the same time, or if you post the child objects before the parent objects. We recommend that you post through the parent object first (i.e. the campaign creation jobs) and wait for this to complete before posting the corresponding child objects (i.e. the group creation jobs).
• When the campaign jobs are selected to post out of order, the system may send the campaigns to the publisher a first time and then repost the job a second time. This second occurrence will cause the Duplicate Campaign error since it was already sent to the publisher in the initial post.

How To Resolve The Issue

From the Navigation Bar, click  Accounts > Publishers. Select the Manage Account button and search for the account and campaign name and make sure it shows as Linked. If it is not linked, link it in. Also note if the option to Automatically link new campaigns is not selected, then campaigns created in the publisher will not be linked into the platform automatically.

If you do not see the campaign in the list, check the publisher to verify if the campaign is deleted. If so, you can reactivate the campaign (depending on the publisher) and sync it down. You cannot reactivate Microsoft campaigns.

If the campaigns are missing or do not show as already being linked in the Linking Wizard, then there are two options to either delete or rename the campaign from the publisher or the platform:

Delete Or Rename Campaign From platform And Sync Campaign From Publisher

1. If the campaign has any groups, keywords and creative uploads in To be sent or To be resent status in the Activity Log, place them on hold for the time being. If there isn’t anything in To be sent status, you may want to create keyword and creative reports in order to protect your data.
2. Delete or rename the campaign from the platform (since the campaign still lives in the publisher it will come back down into Marin automatically).
3. Navigate to Publishers  > Manage Accounts to select the account and campaign and link it in.
4. If you renamed the campaign, go into the Activity Log to select the rename operation and click on Cancel to remove it since those bulk sheets contain the old campaign names.
5. If you deleted the campaign, go into the Activity Log and have anything in the Held status from step 1 posted to the publisher.

Rename The Campaign In Google Ads/Microsoft Ads And Post The Campaign In The platform

1. Login to the publisher account and rename the campaign.
2. Navigate to the Campaigns grid in the platform and find the campaign with the sync error. Then select the Pause or Resume button to push to the publisher.
3. Post the campaign in the Activity Log.
4. If there's any keyword or creative in the To be sent status from the Activity Log, post those as well.
5. Pause or delete the newly renamed campaign in Google Ads.

How To Resolve 'Parent In Invalid State' Or 'To Be Resent' Status

Once you have solved the duplicate campaign issue as outlined above, you may notice that the affected objects may still show the Parent is in an invalid state error and be in the To be resent status. To resolve this, you can go to the Activity Log and re-push the objects to the publisher manually. If this doesn't work, you will need to re-upload the original bulk sheets for these objects.

For more information about these errors, please read our help article.

Additional Information About This Issue

There may be times that one or more of your campaigns do not appear when you go to the Publishers grid despite the fact that they exist in the publisher interface. Choose a publisher account, and click Edit. If you're sure that these campaigns have not been deleted within Google Ads or Microsoft Ads, you can follow these steps to try to fix this issue:

1. Delete the campaign with the Sync Error from the platform. (This is fine since there is currently no data associated with this campaign structure).
2. Wait for this to finish processing.
3. Navigate to Publishers, select the account the campaign belongs to, then click the Edit button. Within the Account Settings page, scroll down to the list of campaigns. The new campaign as seen in Google Ads will then pop up within this list.
4. Select this campaign and click Link.
5. Wait for this to finish processing.
6. Once the structure has been fully synced to the platform, you should be able to see the groups/keywords/ads within this campaign and any publisher data associated with it for the last 30 days.