Not using Scripts in your ad account? This post is going to help you get up and running by showing you the 4 scripts we use on every ecommerce account. Once you start using scripts, you’ll never be the same again.

Automation and using scripts to make your life easier is the future of our industry. From checking for mistakes in your account, to pulling data and building your reports every Monday morning while you sleep, automation is at the heart of our business. And just so you know, you can use Supermetrics to pull data from ad account or Google Analytics.

If you are familiar with Google Ads scripts then follow the steps below. You’ll be up and running with your first script in 15 minutes. If you want a more in depth walk through, then continue reading below.

Google Ads Scripts In 15 Minutes

  1. Sign in to Google Ads account that you want to add the script to
  2. From the Tools tab click Scripts.
  3. Click Scripts.
  4. Click the large blue + (plus) sign
  5. Replace “Untitled script” with your script’s name.
  6. Copy and paste your script code into the code editor.
  7. Follow the script instructions if you need to add a sheet or an external URL to have your data output onto the sheet
  8. To execute the script in preview mode (recommended), click Preview.
  9. To see the output, click Logs.
  10. Run your script for the first time.

That’s it. Each script will come with its own instructions on how to setup and have the script run in your account.

What Tasks Should You Automate?

I try to automate a few tasks that either: take a ton of time, computers can do faster or is repetitive work. I generally use rules when I need a cause and effect situation to play out. Rules work great if you want to pause or enable something within your account at the campaign, ad group or keyword level. You can now even set rules for topics, placements, age and gender targeting.

If you know it makes more sense to use a script or you found a script in Google Ads scripts solutions library, then go ahead and use it. The 4 main scripts we add to each ecommerce client we manage are:

  1. Negative Keyword Conflict
  2. Limit AdWords Overdelivery
  3. Link Checker
  4. Search Queries Using N-Grams

I’ll run through what each script does and how we use them with clients. I’ll even share a few spots around the internet where you can get more scripts beyond what Google provides.

Negative Keyword Conflict

What: If a negative keyword is blocking your ads from running, this script will find it. A couple important notes about this scripts: it will look at both your ad group and campaigns negative keywords along with your list negative keywords.

Frequency: Hourly is what we do. You can do daily for smaller accounts. Have the script email you when there is an error.

Pros: Easy to use and you can pretty much set it and forget it.
Cons: It can pick up embedded negative keyword in your account, be mindful of that.

Limit AdWords Overdelivery

What: We use this script to pause campaigns that exceed the old 120% above your spend rule. Pacing your budget and making sure you don’t go over is important when you’ve been given a fiscal budget. With Google changing their policy that they can go 200% over your daily budget has created some challenges with wild spikes in account spend. Even with Google saying they will never spend more than 30.4 times your daily budget, spikes in spend doesn’t help.

Frequency: Hourly. No reason to run it daily or more.

Pro: Good way to help you keep track of which campaigns are exceeding your daily budget. If I notice a script has been pausing a campaign that is performing really well, then i’ll think about increasing the budget, barring we can maintain a positive ROAS target for the account.
Con: You can either add another script that reactivates the paused campaigns or make sure you turn them back on when you get in the office in the morning. Adding more code to an account isn’t always a good thing, though.

Link Checker

What: This checks all the URLs attached to your ads, keywords, & sitelinks and makes sure they are going to an active page that is not giving off an error.

Frequency: Hourly for ecommerce clients. Daily for SaaS or sites that don’t update often.

Pro: Does a task faster than a person could.
Con: Doesn’t catch errors related to missing javascript on your site that might cause an invisible error.

Search Queries Using N-Grams

What: From the Brainlabs team behind the script:

An n-gram is a phrase made of n words: a 1-gram is a single word, a 2-gram is a phrase made of two words, and so on. For example, “this four word phrase” contains three 2-grams (“this four,” “four word,” “word phrase”) and two 3-grams (“this four-word” and “four word phrase”). The script adds up the clicks, impressions, cost, converted clicks and conversion value of each query containing the n-grams — and calculates the click-through rate, cost per click, conversion rate, CPA and value/cost — so you can see their impact.

Frequency: Ad Hoc. Usually at 6 months with a new client and then as needed.

Pro: We are huge fans of the N-Gram scripts. This has been a lifesaver for the team. We wrote about it last year when we used the scripts to grab all our shopping campaign data and used that knowledge to rebuild a client’s account from scratch.
Con:  It can give you back too much data to look at. Try to only run this scripts on sections of your account to focus your learnings and knowledge overload.

You can also see our post last year, Using Google Shopping Data To Build Out Your Google Ads Account , on how we use N-Gram to build out a client’s Google ads account in 3 weeks, all using Shopping data. Doubled their business from paid ads in 60 days. This is a store already doing 7 figures/ year across the business.

Bonus Scripts Library

Beyond the Google Ads scripts solutions library, you can also check out the 3 sites below to get more scripts for your account. Make sure you always run in Preview mode when you setup any script from Google or anyone else.

Stack Overflow

Github

Free AdWords Scripts

This post is for marketers looking to add automation or increase the automation they are already doing in their account.

That is it for this week. See you next time.

Disclaimer: We independently select the tools and technology that we use at the agency—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission.