Google Ads

This page is for the marketer. It says what you can ask your AI client to read and change in Google Ads, and what happens before anything is changed. It covers Search campaigns and what every campaign type shares. Display, Performance Max, Demand Gen and video are on Google Ads campaign types.

You need a connected Google account (Connecting Google) and, to change anything, write access.

Accounts and the manager account

Your Google sign-in decides which Google Ads accounts you can work on: the ones that login can open in Google Ads itself. Nothing else is added and nothing can be hidden from here.

To see them, open Google connection and press Test connection, or ask:

Which Google Ads accounts can I work on?

The answer lists each account with its name, currency and time zone, and says which are manager accounts. Every amount you give or get back is in the account's own currency.

If you reach your accounts through a manager account:

1. Open Google connection.
2. Under Manager account, type its 10-digit id in Manager account id, such as 123-456-7890.
3. Press Save manager id.

Leave it empty to use every account your login reaches directly. The id is yours alone: each person sets their own.

Opening an account from the activity log

A row in your activity links to the campaign or ad in Google Ads. Google asks which login and which account on the way. To skip both, see Opening an account directly on Google connection: you paste one address from Google Ads and the page remembers that account for you.

How a change happens

Every change is previewed first, and nothing changes until you say yes.

For Google Ads the preview is more than a description: the change is sent to Google marked "check only", so Google itself says whether it would accept it, policy checks on an ad included, without applying it. Your AI client shows you what Google said and what would change, and asks. Two kinds of change cannot be checked by Google without doing them: applying or dismissing a recommendation, and uploading a video. For those the preview is the server's own check, and it says so.

A few things are worth knowing:

• A change over a limit is refused, not trimmed to fit. The refusal names the limit and gives the address of Safety limits, where an administrator changes it.
• Lowering is never refused. A lower budget, bid or target goes through even when the current value is already above a limit.
• A list may go in partly. Where you add many things at once (keywords, negatives, labels, exclusions), each is applied by itself. The answer says which went in and which Google refused, so only those need sending again.
• Removing asks twice. See What can be removed.

The whole model is on How it keeps you safe, and every change, preview and failure is in your activity log.

Reports

Reading needs no write access and changes nothing. You can ask for:

Ask about	What comes back
The whole account	Every campaign, paused ones included, with its type, bidding, daily budget, the last 90 days' spend and conversions, and how many ad groups are on.
Campaigns	Status, daily budget, bidding and figures for a period, highest cost first.
Ad groups and ads	Each ad with its texts, ad strength, approval, what Google says to fix, and figures.
Keywords	Match type, status, bid, quality score and figures.
Search terms	What people really searched for, with the keyword that matched.
A breakdown	By device, hour, day of the week, country, region, age or gender. One at a time.
Quality score	Each keyword's score and its three parts.
Change history	What was changed in the last 30 days, by whom and through what.
Auction insights	Who else shows in the same auctions. Google gives this only to developer tokens it has approved for it; otherwise the answer says so.
Targeting	A campaign's bidding, schedule, device adjustments, locations, languages and settings.

How did my campaigns do in the last 30 days? Which one has the highest cost per conversion?

Show me search terms from last week that cost money and brought no conversions.

Break down the "Brand - KW" campaign by hour of day for this month.

Long reports (keywords, search terms) come in pages. The answer says how many rows there are in all, and your AI client asks for the next page when you need it.

For a question none of these answers, the AI client can write a read-only query in Google's own query language. It can only read.

For Google's leads, see Leads. For one view across all your platforms, see Overview and calendar.

Campaign status and budgets

You can pause or enable a campaign, change its budget, and create a new Search campaign.

Pause the "Summer offer" campaign.

Raise the daily budget of "Brand - KW" from 40 to 50.

• A new campaign is always created paused, whatever the settings say. You enable it once you have looked at its ad groups, ads and targeting.
• A budget raise is held to two limits: Highest daily budget, and Largest budget increase in one call, percent (50 on a new installation). A raise from 40 to 80 is refused under the second; from 40 to 60 goes through.
• A budget stays the kind it is. Most campaigns have a daily budget. A campaign with one total for its whole run (a Demand Gen campaign may have one) is changed by giving a new total. Asking for the wrong one of the two is refused: 50 a day and 50 in all are different requests.

Shared budgets

A shared budget is one daily amount that several campaigns spend together. You can list the account's budgets, create a shared one and move a campaign onto it.

Changing a shared budget, or moving a campaign onto or off one, changes what the other campaigns on it can spend. So the AI client tells you which campaigns those are and asks again before it goes ahead.

Which budgets are shared, and by which campaigns?

Google does not let a Performance Max campaign, a Demand Gen campaign or a campaign with an experiment use a shared budget. Those are refused here with Google's reason.

Keywords and negatives

You can create an ad group, add keywords, pause or enable them, change bids, landing pages and match types, and remove a keyword.

Add "accounting software" as a phrase match and "erp for small business" as exact to the "ERP" ad group.

• New keywords start paused unless your administrator has switched that off. See What starts paused.
• A bid is held to Highest CPC bid.
• A match type cannot be changed in place. Google has no such change, so a new keyword is made with the same text, bid and status, and the old one is paused. The new keyword starts with no history.

Negative keywords stop your ads showing for a search. They can sit on a campaign, on one ad group, or in a shared list attached to several campaigns.

Add "free" and "jobs" as negative keywords to the "ERP" campaign.

When a negative would block one of the campaign's own keywords, the preview warns you. A keyword added to a shared list takes effect in every campaign the list is attached to, and the preview names them.

Removing a negative lets ads show for that search again, so it asks twice. The remove takes negatives only: it cannot be used to remove a keyword you bid on.

Ads

You can create a responsive search ad, pause or enable an ad, and change an ad's text, landing page or display path.

Write a responsive search ad for the "ERP" ad group that leads to https://example.com/erp. Show it to me first.

• A new ad starts paused unless your administrator has switched that off.
• The preview carries Google's policy check, so you see what Google objects to before the ad exists.
• Changing an ad makes a new ad and keeps the old one, so the change can be undone. Where new ads start paused, the new ad is paused and the old one keeps running; you then ask to enable the new one and pause the old one. The AI client tells you which of the two is running.
• You can ask for the ad to be edited itself instead. The old text is then gone from Google (it stays in your activity log) and Google reviews the ad again.

Bidding and schedules

You can change how a campaign bids, set the hours its ads show, and raise or lower bids on a kind of device.

Change "Brand - KW" to maximize conversions with a target cost of 12 per conversion.

Show the "ERP" campaign's ads on weekdays from 8 to 18 only.

• Changing the bidding strategy restarts Google's learning, and a strategy that bids by itself ignores keyword and ad group bids. The AI client says both before you confirm.
• A target cost per conversion is held to Highest target CPA, and a bid ceiling to Highest bid ceiling for automated bidding.
• A bid adjustment upward is held to Largest bid adjustment upward, percent. Adjusting downward, or excluding a device altogether, is always allowed.
• A campaign with no schedule runs at all hours. Once it has one, its ads show only inside it.

Before changing a schedule, a device adjustment or a location, ask for that breakdown first: the AI client is told to look at it.

Assets

Assets are the extras shown with an ad. You can create and link:

• sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets;
• a call asset (a phone number);
• an image, from a file in your media library (see Media);
• a price list and a promotion;
• a lead form.

Add four sitelinks to the "ERP" campaign: Pricing, Demo, Customers, Contact.

An asset is linked to a campaign, an ad group or the whole account. Unlinking one stops it showing there and leaves the asset itself, so it can be linked again. Unlinking asks twice.

A lead form collects people's details on Google itself. Creating one reads no lead. Reading them is a separate capability behind its own switch, off by default: see Leads.

Locations and languages

You can add and remove a campaign's locations, exclude a location, set its languages, choose who a location reaches (people in it, or also people interested in it), and change a campaign's name, dates and tracking.

Target Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the "ERP" campaign, in Arabic and English.

A campaign with no location shows everywhere in the world, and one with no language targets all of them. So:

• removing a campaign's last targeted location is refused;
• setting an empty list of languages is refused;
• swapping one location for another is one step, with no moment in between.

Two of Google's automations can be switched off from here and never on: sending clicks to pages other than your ad's own landing page, and AI Max.

Audiences and exclusions

You can put an audience on a campaign (one of the account's lists, or one of Google's in-market or affinity segments) and create a remarketing list of people who visited a page.

Observation or targeting

A campaign either observes its audiences or targets only them. That choice belongs to the whole campaign. Changing it for one audience changes it for every audience on the campaign, and under targeting the ads show only to the people in those audiences. The AI client says so before you confirm.

Exclusions keep ads away from people and places:

• the people on a list (for example existing customers);
• websites, YouTube channels, YouTube videos and categories of app;
• kinds of content, by Google's content labels and topics.

Keep the "Display - retarget" campaign off mobile games apps.

Adding an exclusion only narrows where ads show. One made on the whole account holds for every campaign. Removing one lets ads show there again, so it asks twice.

A list of your own customers (Customer Match) is behind its own switch: see Conversions and customer lists.

Labels and bulk changes

A label is a name with a colour for grouping campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords. It changes nothing about how they run. You can create one, put it on things, take it off, and ask for a report on only what carries it.

Label every campaign whose name starts with "KW" as "Kuwait", then show me last month's figures for that label.

A bulk change pauses several things, or changes the budget or bid of several, in one request: up to 50, in any mix of campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords.

Pause these six ad groups: ...

Each item is checked by itself, against the same limits as a single change, and gets its own row in the activity log. One refused item does not stop the others. A bulk change never switches anything on and never changes a shared budget: those stay single requests that you confirm one at a time.

Conversion actions and goals

Conversion actions and a campaign's conversion goals decide what bidding aims for, across the whole account. Reading them is always possible:

Which conversion actions does this account bid for?

Changing them is off by default. An administrator switches it on in Safety limits: Let a call change conversion actions and goals. With it on you can:

• create a conversion action, either one counted by Google's tag on a page of your website or one that takes conversions uploaded from your own records;
• change whether bidding uses an action, how it counts, its windows and its value;
• choose what one campaign aims for.

A new action that bidding uses joins what campaigns bid for as soon as it records conversions. The AI client says so. To watch it first, ask for it not to be used for bidding.

Uploading conversions from your records is a separate capability with its own switch: see Conversions and customer lists.

Recommendations and keyword ideas

You can ask for keyword ideas and a forecast from Google's Keyword Planner. Both are Google's estimates, and are worded as estimates. Nothing is created.

Give me keyword ideas for "payroll software" in Egypt, in Arabic.

You can also read Google's recommendations for the account, dismiss one, and apply one.

• A recommendation is Google's suggestion, and many of them raise spend. The AI client shows what one would change before applying it.
• Only three kinds can be applied from here: a budget, a target cost per conversion, and a keyword. Any other kind is refused by name; you make that change with its own request.
• What is applied is held to the same limits as making the change directly.
• A recommended keyword is refused while new keywords start paused, because Google would start it enabled.
• Google cannot check these without doing them, so their preview is the server's own check.

Experiments

An experiment runs a Search campaign as it is against a changed copy, sharing its traffic and its budget.

1. Ask for the experiment to be created. Nothing runs yet. Google makes a draft campaign for the changed copy.
2. Ask for the change you want to test, on that draft: its bidding, ads or keywords, in the same words as for any campaign.
3. Ask for the experiment to be started.
4. Later, end it, or promote it.

Create an experiment on "ERP" that tests maximize conversions against the current manual bidding, on half the traffic.

Ending puts all traffic back on the original campaign, unchanged. Promoting makes the original campaign what the copy was, and that cannot be undone from here. What promoting would write is held to the same limits as making those changes directly.

What starts paused

What	How it starts	Who can change that
A new campaign, of any type	Always paused	Nobody. You enable it as its own request.
A new keyword	Paused, in a new installation	An administrator: Create new keywords paused in Safety limits.
A new ad, ad group or asset group	Paused, in a new installation	An administrator: Create new ads and ad groups paused in Safety limits.

Both switches are on in a new installation. While one is on, asking for that kind of thing to be created enabled is refused. With it off, a new one is created enabled unless the request asks for it paused, so an enabled ad group in an enabled campaign starts showing at once.

Two things start enabled on purpose:

• a keyword that replaces one whose match type you changed takes the old keyword's status, because it replaces something you already switched on;
• what a Display or Demand Gen ad group targets is created active, because targeting that is paused would widen who sees the ads, not narrow it.

What can be removed

Campaigns, ad groups, ads and asset groups cannot be removed from here. Pausing is their off switch, and it keeps their history.

These can be removed. Each asks twice: you ask for the removal itself, you see the preview, and you confirm.

• a keyword (its statistics go with it; pausing is usually what you want);
• a negative keyword, a keyword in a shared negative list, and a shared list's attachment to a campaign;
• an asset's link (the asset stays);
• a campaign's location;
• a label, and a label's link to something;
• an exclusion;
• a conversion action, while conversion edits are switched on;
• people in a Customer Match list.

What was removed is kept in the activity log, so you can see what it was.

The limits, in one place

An administrator sets these in Safety limits, under Google Ads limits, and saves them with Save limits. An empty box means no limit.

Limit	New installation
Highest daily budget	no limit
Largest budget increase in one call, percent	50
Highest CPC bid	no limit
Highest target CPA	no limit
Highest bid ceiling for automated bidding	no limit
Largest bid adjustment upward, percent	no limit
Most keywords in one call	200
Most negative keywords in one call	200

No request can raise a limit by asking. Every limit and switch, for every platform, is on Limits and switches.