If you run Google Ads, you know you need to accomplish a myriad of tasks to increase your success rate or, at the very least, ensure the ads run properly.
The problem is that many of these tasks are tedious, time-consuming, and highly demanding. You need to make sure all the links work, create reports, analyze the data, and stay on top of your AdWords campaigns.
Don’t get me started on the tedious and mind-numbing PPC tasks – organizing excel worksheets, finding ads without price extensions, negating keywords – things that make you question your life’s choices.
Google Ads scripts take away all that hassle by helping you set up automation to handle the tasks you’d rather avoid. Plus, they can work around the clock without ever needing a break or making a mistake.
But what exactly are these Google Ads scripts? How do they work? And which ones should you be using? We answer all that and more in this post. By the end, you’ll walk away with enough knowledge to set up and run Google Ads scripts and optimize your PPC ads.
What Exactly is a Google Ads Script?
Google Ads scripts are JavaScript code snippets that automate certain aspects of your ad campaigns. According to Google, they allow you to “programmatically control Google Ads” in your Google account. This can be especially helpful if you run multiple accounts.
If you can think of an activity within your Google Ads accounts or Ads groups, odds are, there’s a script for it. You can auto-create entire ad groups, filter out low-performing Google Ads and pause them, automatically add negative keywords based on search queries, and even tap into the Google keyword planner.
Google Ads scripts can also interact with external data like spreadsheets, email, and even Google Drive to perform your tasks faster and more efficiently than ever.
The miracle of Google ads scripts comes from the fact that, like you, many marketers hate the humdrum of managing Google Ads. Fortunately, they know enough about JavaScript to write code that can take over these tasks and free up time for everyone.
The good news is that you don’t need to develop your own custom scripts to enjoy the benefit. of a Google Ads script. You can easily install many of them – for free – from your Google Ads account.
Why are Google Ads Scripts so Important?
Google Ads scripts can do a lot for you, but at the end of the day, their benefits can be classified into three major categories.
Saving time
How many hours would you say you spend every week combing through spreadsheets and fixing capitalization mistakes? With the right Google Ads script, you can bring that number down to zero.
Even though these tasks are critical to your campaign’s success, why spend hours doing something you hate when you can have a few lines of JavaScript do it for you?
Catching errors and automating adjustments
Some errors are so glaring that they are impossible to miss. Others are sneaky, and you might not find them until the damage is done. Think sending traffic to broken links without realizing it.
With Google Ads scripts, you can send less traffic to broken links, manage your budget without visiting your dashboard daily, and even create SMS alerts if your billing falls through.
Additionally, some Google Ads scripts allow you to automatically pause your ads when certain conditions are triggered – like website downtime and product stockouts. Scripts allow you to keep your campaigns running at maximum efficiency regardless of the frequency of your input.
Creating more effective campaigns
Every minute you spend without worrying about the minutiae of your Google Ads is time you can invest in creating strategy.
When your team finally creates a strategy, a Google Ads script will allow you to launch them quickly, effortlessly measure their impact, and easily tweak small parameters, all with a minimal time commitment.
Top 25 Google Ads scripts to Supercharge Your PPC Campaigns
1. Hour-by-Hour Trends Heat Map
This script shows your Google Ads performance in an easy-to-interpret heat map format. You can see each device’s performance, from mobile to desktop and tablet. Thanks to it, you can forget about sorting through rows and columns of data and instead get quick snapshots of the information you need.
2. Add Pivot Add Data to a Spreadsheet
Another script that helps you interpret your results better, this Google Ads script will export your Google ads report into Google sheets and allow you to pivot the table. The result is a spreadsheet that’s easier to scan and interpret. This script really comes in handy if you manage more than one Google ads account.
3. Ad Performance Report
Built by Google Developers, this is one of the best free Google Ads scripts out there. The tool will create a report of the CTR statistics of your headline and ad’s display URL, along with the number of instances that each are found in your account. You can also edit the code, so it pulls data for specific description lines for easy comparison.
4. Low-quality Score Keywords Report
This Google ads script makes it so that you never have to worry about using low-quality keywords again. It allows you to set a quality score threshold, and you’ll get a mail showing you the location of keywords that match your criteria.
5. Quality Score Tracker
Wouldn’t it be great to visualize your account level quality score over time? Well, that’s what this brilliant tool does. The Google Ads script checks your quality score and creates a spreadsheet and graph with your score so you can see it at a glance.
6. Link Checker Script
The link checker script is a simple tool that helps you scan your account for ads that return broken 404 links. The great thing is that you won’t get any emails unless there are broken links, so you don’t have to worry about false alarms.
7. Bid Adjustment Script
This Google Ads script was created by Google Developers, and it’s perfect for keeping your campaigns optimized at every point in time. It can help you increase or decrease bids based on the filters you set within your google ads account.
8. Ad Spend Report Script
Ad spend is one metric marketers love to keep an eye on, and this script makes that easier than ever. It will send you recurring email reports that include your ad spend, CPA, conversions, and recommended daily spend. It’s perfect if you’re managing multiple ad groups or more than one Google ads account because you can quickly decide which campaign requires the most attention.
9. Search Query Report
Here’s another helpful script by Google Developers, and it helps you to generate a report of possible negative keywords from your search queries report. Used correctly, it can improve your targeting by adding the right negative keywords to your ad groups.
10. Automate Monthly PresentationMaking
This simple ad script exports data from your Google Ads account to Google slides presentation. You may need to tweak a few things before it’s presentation-ready, but the script will save you time. If you install it, consider using the Automate monthly spreadsheet reporting script as well. It does the same thing but with Google spreadsheets.
11. Pause Ads with Zero Impressions
It’s tough to imagine how marketers got along before this script. It has one simple but essential function – pausing any ads with keywords that generate zero impressions. You can quickly weed out the worst-performing ads in your ad group and stick with the winners. You can even come around later to tweak and improve the ads.
12. Fill Empty Ad Groups with Ads
Worried you might be missing out on high-value traffic but can’t carve out time to write copy? Well, that’s where this Google Ads script shines the brightest. As the name suggests, it helps you fill empty ad groups with temporary generic copy until you can make it more relevant.
13. Rotate And Copy to A/B Test
Here’s another Google Ads script that’s focused on helping you optimize ad performance. This one shows you which ads are performing best and gives you a projection of just how well your account would do if you paused the low-performers in your ad groups.
14. Vallaeys Shopping Efficiently Score
Designed to help improve your shopping campaigns, this Google Ads script will help you check the efficiency of your ads account. Specifically, it will analyze how bids are managed across your accounts, making it easier to improve performance quickly.
15. Keywords for Google Shopping Campaigns
This is the script for you if you’re looking to add an extra boost to your Google shopping campaigns. It allows you to specify keywords you want your ads to appear for in a spreadsheet. Once that’s done, the script will analyze the search queries for your Google shopping campaigns and add whatever keywords you omit in your spreadsheet as negative keywords. One beautiful thing about this script is that you don’t have to worry about duplicate keywords.
16. Pause Overspending Locations
Here’s an example of a Google ads script that can optimize the frequently overlooked areas of your campaign. This one will look at location data for your campaign and allow you to disable locations that exceed a predetermined level of spend. It can add a little extra edge to your campaign, which can turn out to be everything.
17. Copy Google Ads Extensions
Google Ads extensions can significantly boost the click-through rates of your Google Ads campaigns, especially if you haven’t used them before. This script makes it easy to copy these extensions to your various campaigns – a task that would be tedious otherwise.
18. Bulk Shopping Ad Group Creator
Built by Google Developers, this ad script will allow you to create bulk ad groups and product groups in existing shopping campaigns. It will read ad group settings and product group hierarchies and create them in Google Ads.
19. Weather-Based Campaign Management
Wouldn’t it be great if you could automatically adjust your bids when necessary for seasonal products? Well, that’s what this Google Ads script helps you with. It uses an external API that raises your bids when it’s sunny and lowers them in the rainy season.
20. Delete disapproved ads
Not all your ads will be approved, which is fine for simple PPC campaign accounts. But when you’re working with multiple Google Ads accounts, it becomes harder to address the disapproved ads. This script lets you delete the disapproved ads with a single click instead of combing through your accounts.
21. Fix Capitalization Errors
An error as simple as a capitalization mistake can affect the performance of your ads and drop your CTR. Luckily, this script helps you avoid these errors permanently across all your accounts by combing through your ads and ensuring there are no capitalization errors.
22. Correct Date and Time zone
If you’re running multiple campaigns in different time zones, using certain scripts can get confusing if your account is in a different time zone than the data center. It will eventually become impossible to coordinate scripts that run on a schedule – like ones that pause ads, for example. This simple script fixes that problem by ensuring that all your other Ads scripts are running in the timezone on your account.
23. Save a File or Spreadsheet in a Google Drive Folder
While it won’t double your CTR, this Google Ads script can save you a few extra minutes by letting you save your spreadsheets directly into your preferred drive folder. That way, you don’t have to worry about reorganizing them down the line.
24. Identify Ad, Ad Group, or Keyword Creation Date
This script comes in handy when you’re trying to track down the source of a change in your Google Ads account. It lets you see the exact date you created an ad group, campaign, or keyword.
25. Pause Suspicious Ads
You can’t always keep an eye on your CTR in real time; many markets with large accounts prefer to generate a report and look over the spreadsheet after. But if your ads are getting invalid clicks, it probably means your campaign is under attack by click bots and similar agents. Luckily, this Google Ads script helps you pause the targeted ads until you can properly address the problem.
One last tip
It would be a shame to invest all this time into your Google Ads, install scripts that optimize performance, and get everything dialed in, only to gain invalid clicks and abysmal conversions.
Unfortunately, that’s the reality for most marketers, as statistics show that 20% of PPC advertisers’ budgets in 2022 are wasted due to advertising click fraud).
The Pause Suspicious Ads Script can help with this problem, but all it really does is suspend the campaign. You need a foolproof way to keep malicious agents away from your ads, and with real time traffic monitoring and blacklisting, ClickCease keeps your campaigns running while blocking bad traffic.
By using ClickCease to protect your Google Ads, you’re optimizing your ad spend, CTR, and cost for each conversion. What’s more ClickCease works with paid search campaigns, the Google Display Network, YouTube ads and more.
Run a free traffic audit with a 7 day trial of ClickCease.