What are PPC scripts and what they are used for?

All you need to know about PPC scripts

In computing, a script is ‘an automated series of instructions carried out in a specific order’. Scripts are used by our PPC team and they perform various tasks in the background of Google Ads. Scripts can be written inside Google Ads and are pieces of JavaScript code.

Scripts can easily be written, tested and scheduled in the Google Ads browser and do not require any additional software. Google Ads scripts can interact with external platforms such as Google Sheets for reporting.

A script can perform tasks in the background. This may include pausing inefficient keywords, ensuring all campaigns have the correct negative placements, adjusting daily budgets and checking the landing page of each ad. A script can perform thousands of tasks at a very efficient rate and ultimately, scripts save a lot of time and allow your PPC team to focus on other techniques such as optimisation.

Examples of popular scripts

We have a script that checks the landing page of thousands of PPC ads every day and this takes just a few minutes to run. This task would take a human hours to perform; doing it quicker saves resource and, should there be any issues with the client website, significantly reduces the risk of paying for clicks to land on a page that does not load. Scripts can be scheduled to run at various intervals, such as daily, weekly and monthly, depending on the task.

Below we’ve outlined some examples of scripts that we are using at Space & Time.

1. Search query reports:

One script we are using can create search query reports automatically. This script will generate a search query report in an account. It will output the results to Google Sheets, for the PPC team to go through and find positive and negative keywords to add or remove from the account. This saves a lot of time, as generating these reports manually is much more time consuming.

2. Copy negative placements to all new campaigns:

This script will run daily to see what new campaigns were created and it will automatically apply any negative placements to any new campaign. This script allows us to make sure that every campaign we launch has negative placements applied and is covered for brand safety, ensuring that our adverts are not shown alongside content we have deemed inappropriate.

3. Daily budget adjustment:

This script will schedule your budgets throughout the week. It can increase and decrease budgets depending on the day of the week, which could be useful for certain clients or campaigns, such as special offers. This would be useful if you wanted to increase spend on a campaign over the weekend or over the popular holidays.

There are plenty of websites dedicated to PPC scripts. Many scripts are free to download, and open-source. We routinely edit these in simple programs like Notepad and modify them to suit the specific needs of our client accounts. Google Ads allows users to ‘preview’ the script to see what it will do in account before it is set live.

Why not get in touch with our PPC team to discuss which scripts may be right for you.