Supercharge Your PPC With These Awesome Google Ads Scripts

Google Ads scripts are something that all the PPC geeks know about, but something not many take full advantage of.

We spend so much of our time cleaning the account, pulling & manipulating the data, when we should be spending our time strategizing & optimizing. Alternatively, these tasks get left by the wayside because we simply don’t have the time to do it all.

What’s the solution?

Scripts!

Scripts are pieces of code that can be uploaded into Google Ads that help you better control & analyze your campaigns. Sounds simple, right? Well, it is & it isn’t (best answer I know).

A script can be so powerful & so customizable that you could do almost anything that you can imagine (take it with a pinch of salt, I’m being hyperbolic for dramatic effect).

Here’s just a short list of reasons that scripts are awesome & should be looked into for your accounts:

1. They save time (this is a biggy), allowing you to do more of the optimizing & strategizing that will make the big, long-term differences to the account.
2. You can see the data more clearly, side-by-side, in different ways & make reporting or presenting to the client cleaner & more efficient, without having to spend time in the interface going back & forth for different date ranges or campaign filters, having multiple tabs open on the computer so you can compare.
3. Scripts can flag inconsistencies in the account, underperforming keywords that are high spending, flag declining performance.
4. They can help you find missed opportunities & make recommendations based on the data & best practice that you set.
5. You can track budgets & which ad groups, keywords, search terms that the money is going towards without having to go in & out of the different levels on the interface.
6. You can combine the scripts into one so all the different data is in one place to make them easier to manage.
7. The possibilities are endless. Arguably The most important feature of scripts that make them worth using. Since they are just snippets of javascript, you can create & edit them. Want to adjust bids for locations with good weather? Done. Want to link a black box in your vehicle so you can increase bids for people searching in that area? Done. Want to automatically pause ads for items that are out of stock so you don’t waste money? Scripts have you covered.

I wanted to make forecasting simpler, more efficient & with less room for human error (math errors in particular). Now, I’ve wrote a script for that.

I used Russell Savage’s script for Campaign & Keyword Performance Reporting as a foundation & added on my own snippets to build out additional reports for account & campaign reporting over custom date ranges, and used this to then automatically show YoY relative % change by month of the key metrics for forecasting: average CPC, conversion rate & CTR.

From here, I built out sheets for:

• 12-month forecast based on YoY relative change
• 12-month forecast based on average change over the last 3 months.
• ‘What if’ sheet for what you need & what you’ll get for your given budget & target.

What’s the benefit of this script? Well, previously we’d spend our time manually forecasting for new clients or for long-term clients who want to see forecasts for the next month, quarter, or year. You can also show a client how realistic or unrealistic their targets are & how far you have to get there! This can be a great starting point for your strategy. How much time does this save? Short answer: a lot.

Here are some of my favorite scripts so far:

1. Forecasting & Performance Summary (I’m being biased of course).
2. Performance Max by Mike Rhodes – this script gives a breakdown of which networks your Pmax campaigns are spending your budget, where the conversions are coming from, performance of your feed & more. We use this for making optimisation decisions and then seeing how the distribution changes.
3. Quality Score Tracker by Clicteq & Quality Score Factors In Bulk by Brainlabs – these scripts show essentially the same data, but in different ways so take your pick! They show the quality scores of all the keywords in your account, what the average is & how they are all stacking up against ad relevance, landing page experience & expected CTR.
4. Declining Ad Group Performance by Google Ads Scripts – this script will create a spreadsheet with any active ad groups whose CTR has been declining for 3 consecutive weeks, meaning you can easily see the decline & dive into it without having to look at each individual ad group & manually compare week-on-week.
5. Auction Insights Report by Daniel Gilbert – this script will map out how you are stacking up against competitors with the metrics from auction insights over a set period of time & even better, it will show your CPC as well, so you can easily compare. You can also choose which competitors to show!
6. Pausing Overspending Locations by Frederick Vallaeys – this one is a great example of how scripts can help you optimise often overlooked aspects of a campaign – locations! Do you want to have a wide location target but have a small budget? This script has you covered. It helps you set a budget for specific locations within a campaign & once this is exceeded it will adjust the bid to -90%. This bid modifier is then reset to 0% when a new month starts with new budget. It will also keep a report of which location is spending & how much they have spent throughout the month, so you can enable in this area before month’s end if you want to.
7. Copy Google Assets (Extensions) To Campaigns by Dan Gilbert – this one is a major life & time-saver. It will copy all assets to campaigns you choose & avoid others. For example, it can copy all assets to campaigns containing “Generic” and not to those containing “Brand”. This ensures all your campaigns & ads are consistent & up to date.

There are so many more scripts & I urge you to go into the big brave world of coding & hunt them down! If you can’t find something, then you can create it.

We use scripts at House Of Performance specifically for reporting over those that will make actual changes in the account. This is because whilst scripts are great, they can make you lazy if you are too reliant on them. Make sure to be particular about the scripts to run, rather than just adding them all to all your accounts!

But add this forecasting & performance summary script, because it’s great (if I do say so myself…)
https://github.com/holliethubron/forecast_script/blob/main/forecasting_perf_google_ads