This morning, I stumbled upon a gripping post on Reddit that vividly portrays a pain so relatable, it hits you right in the gut:
“…the client noticed and was annoyed, then my director noticed and was annoyed, and now he has to tell our new boss (who will be annoyed) and in the end we’ll have to write off the cost and I’ll have lost my agency a little chunk of commision.”
OUCH!!
In the Reddit post, OP describes how he used the Google Ads UI to copy-paste YouTube campaigns. And without him knowing, the copies had the Display Network enabled, where the original did not…
The result? Display pissed away half of his budget on random websites and apps!
Yep, Google is like that.
Bug, or feature? You tell me…
Either way, this is a great example of one of my favorite use cases for scripts — prevent manual mistakes.
To prevent mistakes likes this: you could create a script that runs every hour and uses a GAQL query to check the ‘network_settings.target_content_network’ setting for your campaigns, and send an email alert if that setting is ‘true’.
Here’s the thing: You can easily ask GPT-4 to create a script that will prevent costly mistakes like this.
Here’s the query I used:
“Create a google ads script that uses gaql to check if my campaigns have the ‘network_settings.target_content_network’ setting set to true. The script should log all the campaigns that have this setting set to true and send an email alert if there is at least one campaign that has this setting set to true.”
Go ahead, try it for yourself. It only takes 5 minutes!
– Nils
P.S. Want to learn how to create a script like this?
I’ve got good news for you!
If you can read English, you can create your own Google Ads Script and have GPT assist you.
In my Google Ads Scripts for Beginners workshop, you will learn exactly what to do to get your very own script running in your account. In ONE DAY.
Places are limited. Reserve your spot now: https://nilsrooijmans.com/google-ads-scripting-workshop-for-beginners/
Hope to see you there!
P.P.S. Here’s the link to the original Reddit post with more details:
https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/13qheuz/does_anyone_know_an_automted_way_to_prevent_the/