Using Scripts for Automating Your Google Ads Campaigns

Optimising your account with Google Ads scripts may seem like a daunting prospect for PPC experts and newbies alike. However, these nifty automation tools are easy to use, save a lot of time and allow you to increase the performance of your campaigns. 

Getting started with scripts can be as simple as searching for the multitude of free, pre-built scripts available from coding experts on the web. Many can be added with a simple copy, paste and run – perfect if you’re not quite ready to customise your own yet.  

In this blog post, we introduce the prospect of Google Ads scripts, the reasons to use them in your PPC campaigns and, if you jump to the end, we give a little insight into Peaky Digital’s three favourite scripts to try!

What are Google Ads scripts? 

Simply put, Google Ads scripts are snippets of JavaScript code that can be added to your Google Ads account to automate, control and interact with data in your PPC campaigns. The code is set up to adhere to certain determiners, allowing you to have full control of what the scripts can do. 

For example, say you are a PPC account manager and you’re struggling with finding a way to filter out and exclude keywords relating to a competitor in your Search campaign. 

Going through search terms manually and excluding the keywords will be a lengthy and labour-intensive method. By using a script, you can specify the keyword you want to filter out, add the script to your account, let it run and you’re done!

Why should you be using scripts in your Google Ads account? 

The main advantage of Google Ads scripts that we’ve touched on already is that it saves a lot of time in day-to-day PPC management. What could you be doing with that extra time? Let’s get into some of the reasons you should be using scripts: 

Make easy adjustments to your account

Scripts maximise productivity, even while away from your campaigns. Automating the more tedious processes in your Google Ads account means you can dedicate your time to building successful campaigns and increasing returns.

When you’ve got the day-to-day tasks such as looking at monthly budgets or adding negative keywords automated and under control, your PPC management checklist becomes much shorter. This means there is increased capacity to focus on your PPC strategy. 

Spend more time working on your PPC strategy 

Having a watertight strategy can be the make or break of PPC campaigns. When lower-level operational tasks take up the bulk of your time, it can feel like your campaigns are lacking in direction. 

Without enough time to gather the data you need from your campaigns, strategic decisions cannot be made accurately and efficiently.

Using scripts to automate reports and gather actionable insights from your campaigns will help create a steer for your strategy. For example, you can use scripts to gather device information, the most engaged day of the week for impressions, or which search term converted the most to influence your strategy going forward. 

Minimise mistakes 

As much as we hate to admit it, everyone makes mistakes. 

Luckily, scripts make it much easier to correct mistakes, and can even alert you to the mistake immediately so that there is time to correct it. 

Say goodbye to the anxiety of accidentally pausing campaigns, overspending on your monthly budget and sending paid search traffic to broken links – to name a few!

Increase the performance of your campaigns

Arguably the most important reason to use scripts is that it allows you to increase the performance of your campaigns by carrying out automated reactive optimisations. 

For instance, this will save you from bidding excessively on low-converting keywords and from missing out on increasing bids for high-converting keywords. Therefore increasing your campaign performance and pay-per-click revenue. 

3 key Google Ads scripts examples to take away and try

Here are Peaky’s 3 go-to scripts to try on your Google Ads campaigns:

Remove automatically created videos from PMAX campaigns

If you don’t provide a video on PMAX campaign setup, Google creates one for you and, I think we can all agree, Google’s automatically created YouTube videos are… not the best. 

There are two ways to prevent automatic YouTube video creation: to provide one yourself or to delete it entirely.

To delete the videos, copy and paste the following script into your account, authorise, run and you’re done!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11EnTsOHNlctimmD5HUPiFBr-2GOzlvBwiWD-5xVAtiM/edit

Adjust bids for campaigns based on the weather

With Google’s weather-based script, you can adjust your bids to align with the weather conditions without having to manually change this every day.

Need to trigger ads mentioning umbrellas when it’s raining, blankets when it’s cold or suncream when it’s hot? This script can help! While this particular example needs some customisation, Google’s step-by-step guide is clear and easy to follow. 

https://developers.google.com/google-ads/scripts-legacy/docs/solutions/weather-based-campaign-management 

Pause all “zero impressions” keywords 

Another really simple ‘copy, paste and go’ script! This one combs through keywords in your campaigns, looks for ones generating zero impressions and pauses them before they start generating traffic and clicks and impacting quality score. 

This way you can eliminate the low-hanging fruit!

http://www.freeadwordsscripts.com/2012/11/pause-all-keywords-with-no-impressions.html 

Manage your PPC campaigns with Peaky Digital

If Google Ads scripts sound like a good idea for your business but you’re unsure of where to start, the PPC team at Peaky Digital are here to help you! Contact us today to discuss your tailored Google Ads account management and strategy.