These days, Google is all about automation, automation, automation, and that’s great, but not always when it is all in the hands of the company you’re giving your money to. But what if there was a way to create automations that do exactly as you would like? Welcome to Google Ads Scripts.
You see, Google’s automations work by using the data Google has, whereas scripts allow you to automate using the data you have. Google defines Google Ads scripts as a “way to programmatically control your Google Ads data using simple JavaScript in a browser-based IDE”. What does that mean? In short, you can program your ad account to respond to various signals and automatically update its settings or create, edit and remove ads.
How can Google Ads Scripts Support Your Startup?
The limitations are mostly tied to your (or your developer’s) skills, but here are a few examples:
Stay accurate by automating the data that is presented in your ads – does your pricing change? Why not have your headlines updated accordingly?
Spend less time in the weeds and more time presenting the insights – accounts can grow to thousands of keywords, and conversion data isn’t always held in Google. If you need to find what keywords are working and make bid changes based on this data, why not let the script do it for you.
Avoid unreliable daily run rates leading to overspending – simply enter a budget and set it to daily, weekly, or monthly and let the script pause certain campaigns once they exceed this budget, before reactivating automatically the next month.
Have confidence while you sleep – you need sleep, but the code doesn’t. Let it do the hard yards, whilst you rest. Scripts can be set up to run hourly, daily, or just once!
Create near-live dashboards, with the data, presented the way you like it – fancy yourself a Google Sheets wizard, but tired of importing all the data you need to process? Simply link your Google Ads script to the relevant sheet and apply your formula-based magic right on top.
Stay up to date as things change – still not entirely sold on full automation? No problem, you are right to be skeptical. Why not set up a script to notify you, via email or Slack, when something has changed in the account or something is wrong.
And if none of these are enough on their own, get creative and combine them. As mentioned earlier, this is a tool that is mainly limited only by your capabilities. This brings us to the final major benefit; the coding language used is another great skill to practice and can help you in all sorts of other areas. Whether it be coding yourself, or being able to understand your dev team’s problems and requests, invest in upskilling yourself.
Automation is inevitable, and in many cases the right route, but make sure it is on your own terms.
Keen to have a look at some of the great pre-written scripts out there? Check out some of the free templates and explainers offered by PPC Protect. They aren’t paying us, they are just a really great resource.