News and Insights
The 10 most useful automated scripts for Google Ads
February 13, 2018
Our PPC service team are always running campaigns. To help ensure we deliver the best results we can, we use automated scripts to help us optimise all of our campaigns, allowing us to deliver the highest ROI possible. Automated scripts are pieces of custom javascript that allow the automation of common procedures which can interact with external data making real-time changes to your Google Ads account.
Why use automated scripts in your paid campaigns?
The power of automated scripts, simply put, is that they allow us to carry out multiple optimisations in real time utilising the power of our data. They can run from custom, pre-determined spreadsheets or integrate with API’s to pull in external data sources.
There are now hundreds of unique automated scripts that have been written and now made opensource by the creators, allowing anyone to implement them into their PPC campaigns. I’m going to talk through some of my favourite scripts that allow some of the most useful optimisations in Google Ads.
In our list the scripts are broken down by the type of action they were written for.
Bid Modification
These are a couple of really simple yet powerful scripts that will apply to almost every PPC campaign you find yourself running. They operate at the core of any account optimisations you’ll need to carry out to ensure positive ROI’s are consistently delivered.
1. 24 Hour Bid modifier.
This bid automation script is a real favourite as it allows us to set bid adjustments for each hour of the day in 24 blocks. This allows us to further optimise as the standard Google Ads ad schedule allows only 6 changes to your hourly bid adjustments throughout the day. This script pulls in data from a Google Sheet, which allows for a speedy, precise update if you find that your conversion rates are changing throughout the year. We find that conversion rates differ greatly throughout the day and week and using this automated tool allows us to optimise our campaigns, making our paid search budgets work as hard as possible.
2. Mobile Bid Modifier.
This mobile bid modifier script was built to bring mobile conversion performance in line with desktop and tablet. This script pulls in the conversion rates for all campaigns and segments by device before applying specific bids of between –100% – 300% to mobile in order to align device performance. This is a handy script if you find that your conversion rates by device are imbalanced.
Ad Optimisation
These scripts help ensure the ad variants running across your paid search campaigns are fully optimised. When A/B testing ad copy they help reduce the amount of time it takes to optimise ad copy.
3. Pausing 0 Impression Keywords.
This is a really great script for very large accounts which have been neglected and have gathered large quantities of ‘dead’ keywords which affect your quality score. You set it up to analyse impression data over a specific time period and to remove existing keywords with 0 impressions. It’s simple and can save you a lot of time.
4. Pausing and Deleting Ads.
This is a really great script to run when you have a large number of ad groups and ad variants showing at the same time. The script works by pulling in the data for all ads groups running and the ad variants within them and pauses the ads with the lowest CTR’s (click-through rate), which can affect your quality score. This script can be set to pause ads or delete them from the account entirely and is comparatively simple to implement.
By Freeadwordsscripts Here.
By Freeadwordsscripts Here.
Budget Management
These are a couple of really cool scripts helping to automate and ensure that budgets are managed accurately. When dealing with multiple accounts, these scripts make keeping on top of scheduling a lot easier.
5. Account budget pause.
This tool is simple in its functionality but what it delivers can be very powerful for those with very strict budgets. The script was written by Sean Dolan of Pushfire and sits on your account as a safety net for your monthly budget. It will pause all campaigns the second your budget is reached. This one really is great for when mistakes simply can’t be made.
6. Pause / Start Campaign by Date.
This script is a great way to set multiple pause and unpause dates for your campaigns. Automate rules allows you to set a single pause and unpause date and this script allows much more flexibility in setting your campaign schedule. If you know your campaigns should not be running for every bank holiday you can simply set up the script at the start of the year to save yourself the time of implementing this manually.
Hosted by Evertnote Here.
By Freeadwordsscripts Here.
Miscellaneous bidding
These are a couple of really clever scripts that, if implemented correctly, can drastically improve campaign performance. They may not be suitable for every campaign, but are great to keep in the back of your mind.
7. Bid by weather.
This might be the coolest use of automated scripts we know of and we love the idea behind it. The bid by weather script pulls in data through the OpenWeatherMap API and applies certain bid changes to your account based on pre-defined weather changes. This script is incredibly powerful for any businesses whose conversions are dependent upon certain weather conditions.
8. Bid to Position.
This script was written by the guys over at Brainlabs and kindly made opensource allowing all to freely use it. This script uses hourly data to alter bids in order to target a specific position on the SERP. This can be a really powerful tool to test performance of your ads by your position. You may find that your ROAS are significantly higher and are able to gain more clicks from appearing in position 2 as opposed to position 1. This script could also be used creatively if you know you’re going to appear in a certain position you could use your position in the ad copy to highlight your technical Google Ads abilities.
By Google Here.
PPC Reporting
These are a couple of scripts that will help out with any Google Ads reporting you may be doing. They are able to pull in data automatically and run each month/week depending on the frequency of your reporting. These will help save time leaving you to work on the more important things.
9. Ad performance report.
The ad performance report script is great if you have lots of ad groups running with multiple ad variants inside each ad group. Automating this process allows you to save time on your reporting by having your ad performance data emailed directly to you.
10. Search query report.
This is a great report to set up to periodically identify new keywords to bid on and negative keywords to exclude. This script works by comparing search term performance with the search query performance report and references these against preset thresholds to generate lists of exact match keywords and negative keywords. This is a really powerful script for simultaneously generating new keyword opportunities and reducing wasted spend. Win win.
By Google Here.
So there you have it, our ten favourite automated scripts for Google Ads. Utilising just a few of these for your PPC campaigns can help drive some seriously strong optimisations for you accounts. You may need the help of a kind developer to get the more complex scripts implemented but once they’re set up, you’re good to go forever.
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