3 Powerful New Use Cases for Google Ads Scripts

You probably don't think much about Google Ads scripts, but you might change your mind after this.

Would you be surprised if I told you that Google Ads received a super powerful update to its scripting features? You probably didn't know, and I don't blame you. Google Ads scripts have always been one of the most underutilized features of the platform. It makes sense as the barrier to entry is much more technical, and until recently it just wasn't relevant to most accounts.

However, with its most recent update, the potential for what you can do with it has skyrocketed. Today, I will explain some of the new features and provide 3 powerful use cases.

1. Link your shopping feed to search campaigns

If you're an eCommerce store, you can use PMax and Shopping campaigns to advertise your products with product listing ads. However, what if you want to show those products as a text ad in a search result?

The potential is amazing; you usually have much less control over your shopping placements than your search placements. However, even if your store has a small catalog, you don't want to go through the effort of constantly updating your ads manually as things like stock or price change.

Well, that's no longer an issue! With the latest update, you can integrate your shopping content directly into ad scripts. Here are a few things you can do with this:

  • Automatically insert feed data as variables in your text ads (e.g. title, price, description)
  • Automatically create new text ads for product releases
  • Automatically pause text ads for products that are out of stock or no longer available.
  • Automatically enable text ads for products that have recently come back into stock.

And there's so much more potential too. To get started, you can link your shopping feed to Google Ads Scripts using the Advanced APIs feature.

2. Automatically generate lists of negative keywords or placements

Usually, broad targeting on search/display works best when accompanied by a list of negative search terms or placements. While this is effective, its labor is extremely tedious and has you staring at spreadsheets for hours.

However, using Google Ads Scripts, you can automatically generate lists of negative keywords or placements based on criteria you define. For example, you could generate a list of search terms with less than 1.5% CTR in the last 7 days andmore than $100 in spend.

3. Adjust bids based on the weather outside

The weather might seem weird to exclude based on, but it's one of the most fundamental factors when considering local targeting. For example, if you're advertising a minigolf course, it doesn't make sense to spend during the snow.

However, it'd be impractical to manually adjust spend based on weather - especially if you're targeting multiple geos. Google Ads scripts now integrate with OpenWeather servers to retrieve real-time weather data. you could then set up logic like when it's snowing, reduce spending to $0.