If you have been working with AdWords, chances are you have heard about AdWords Scripts at some stage. If you are already using AdWords Scripts, you will probably know that they are a great way to save time and improve performance. If you have not yet implemented AdWords scripts, read further to find out how AdWords Scripts can help you. This post not only introduces you to AdWords Scripts, but also highlights four use cases for AdWords scripts.
What are AdWords scripts?
AdWords Scripts allow you to programmatically interact with AdWords. Let’s break that down a bit – what exactly do we mean by programmatically and how exactly are we able to interact with AdWords?
First of all, AdWords Scripts are created using JavaScript, a universal and extremely common programming language. This means that there is no shortage of people who are able to understand, edit and create AdWords Script – a good thing for us marketers!
The second important aspect is that the true power of AdWords Scripts comes from the ability to repeat a given process as many times as necessary. This means that they can repeat a process for all Ads, Keywords, Ad-Groups or Campaigns.
Finally, AdWords Scripts can be programmed to run according to a schedule. This allows for automation and eliminates the need for people to spend time on mundane, repetitive and demoralizing tasks.
How can You use AdWords Scripts?
In order to demonstrate the power of AdWords Scripts, we present four use cases:
Use Case 1: Reporting
Automate all standard reporting
AdWords Scripts can easily be linked to Google Sheets, which allows you to automate all of the data gathering and processing for reports. This means that all of the manual data entering or data manipulation for daily, weekly, monthly, etc. reports, can be fully automated using AdWords Scripts.
This gives you more time to focus on the important part, namely the interpretation of the numbers and discovering meaningful and valuable insights.
Generate automatic day/time heat maps
In addition to standard reporting, AdWords Scripts can also be used for more advanced reporting. For example, you are able to create day/time heat-maps that display the average CTR/CPC or Cost per Conversion at every hour of every day. Below is an example of what a CTR heat-map would look like:
Similarly, you can use AdWords scripts together with Google Sheets to create other advanced visualizations such as histograms and scatterplots.
Use Case 2: Advanced Notifications
404 notifications
One of the first AdWords Scripts that we implemented at Amazee Metrics was a script that checks all landing pages for 404s or redirects. Our script is based on this script, which is available from Google. We did however make some small changes, so that instead of sending an email, the script sends us a Slack message whenever it finds landing pages with a 404.
This means that you can be completely assured that you are never paying for clicks that end up on a 404 page.
Change in Quality Score notifications
Another great example of advanced notifications is a script that notifies you whenever there is a significant drop in quality score for any of your keywords. You are able to change the threshold, according to your preference or keywords, for how large the drop has to be before you are notified.
This allows you to examine which keywords are losing their impact and either remedy this, or remove these keywords. Similarly, you could set up a script that alerts you when the quality score of a keyword has increased by a certain threshold.
Use Case 3: Bid Adjustments
Adjust bids based on weather
One of the more complex but powerful applications of AdWords scripts is a script that allows you to adjust your bids based on the weather in a certain location. This makes use of a weather feed and then makes adjustments based on a pre-determined set of rules that you have established.
This is extremely useful for situations where there is a correlation between weather conditions and your website’s performance. This is also a great example of functionality that is not feasible when adjusting your AdWords campaigns manually.
Adjustments based on website performance
Your own website data is another factor that can be used to adjust bidding strategies. If you have noticed that sales of a specific product have increased drastically from non-paid traffic sources, but remained the same from paid search, it may be worth increasing your bid for search terms relating to this product. Doing this continually for each product would previously have been a monumental amount of work.
With AdWords scripts however, you can easily base your bidding strategy on website data. This includes ecommerce and engagement related data – or any other website data that you believe to be relevant.
Use Case 4: Campaign Optimization
Pause poorly performing ads or ad-groups
AdWords is an ever changing environment where campaigns or ad groups can improve or deteriorate from one day to the next. In the case of an ad-group where performance deteriorates, it may be necessary to pause the ad group.
An AdWords script is able to save you the time of going through all campaigns, ad groups and ads in all of your accounts every day. It can do so by pausing poorly performing campaigns, ad groups or ads and then simply notifying you so that you are able to go in and determine whether it is worth re-working or whether it should remain paused.
Change keyword match-type based on impressions
Your keyword match-type can have a big impact on the number of impressions received by your ads. Exact matches reduce the number of impressions you receive while broad matches often see increased bidding competition. To adjust this for each keyword based on historical data can be extremely time consuming.
Luckily, if you are able to define a set of rules for when keywords should be changed from one match-type to another, this entire process can be fully automated with AdWords scripts.
Time to get Started
By automating these processes, you are able to minimize the scope for human error, increase your access to detailed and up to date data, and finally save yourself time!
With a little bit of automation that saves you 20minutes every day, you will end up saving 87 hours throughout the year.
This leaves you more time for doing the important stuff and making sure that your campaigns are living up to their full potential. Once your campaigns are fully optimized, you may even have time to write blog posts! 😉
