“I want to automate everything that will save me time”
Here’s some good news: Google Ads scripts will get you a long way, and will probably fulfill your needs without advanced coding skills and/or expensive software development.
But.. they do have their limitations. If you hit those limits you might need to turn to the Google Ads API and create a (custom) software application to fix the job.
Here’s my guide to help you choose between the two options.
Choosing Between Google Ads Scripts and the AdWords API – A Breakdown:
| Google Ads Scripts | Google Ads API | |
| Skills needed | (Preferably) at least a little knowledge of Javascript , but Copy-and-Paste will also do | Develop some code, need some SDKs, setup and host a server to run the code |
| Scheduling | Set your schedule in Google Ads interface
Run max once per hour Has 30-minute run time limit |
Schedule using cron jobs on your server
Can run any minute of the day Limit is on number of requests, not runtime |
| Features | Supports most features available for Google Ads and other Google products (ex. Gmail, Drive, Sheets)
Limited functionality for non-Google platforms Not all entities in Google Ads supported |
More flexibility when making Google Ads work with non-Google platforms–after all, it’s your own app
Almost every entity in Google Ads supported |
Use Google Ads when
1) You only need basic automation for a limited number of accounts. If you just want to adjust bids once a day, or deactivate your ads every weekend, then you don’t need the Google AdWords API. A script can already do a wide range of basic operations on your account, such as adjusting budgets, making bulk uploads of ads from CSVs in Google Drive, exporting reports to Google Sheets, and more.
In fact, if you want to get started with Google Ads scripts, there’s no need to write your own. I’m offering free access to my ultimate list of Google Ads scripts here. This will also give you a better understanding of what is possible using scripts.
2) You don’t have the time, money, or resources to write your own independent app. To use the Google AdWords API, you basically need to build your own app that can talk to Google Ads’ servers. So if you don’t have the time, patience, nor technical expertise to write an app from scratch, then Google Ads scripts are for you. That’s especially since there are already a lot of pre-made scripts that you can practically copy-and-paste into your own account.
Use the Google AdWords API when
1) You need to run your automation at specific times. As you might recall, while you can schedule a Google Ads script to run hourly, daily, or monthly, you can’t specify it to run at a specific minute.
That’s one advantage of using the API: you can get more granularity when it comes to scheduling operations. You can code the API to run exactly at 12:59 pm every other night–a feature not possible with scripts.
2) Your scripts are hitting the 30-minute run limit in Google Ads. In general, a Google Ads script stops running after 30 minutes. That’s because, as this response from the Google AdWords Script Team notes, these scripts run on Google’s servers itself.
While there are still some limits when using either the Google Ads API or the AdWords API, they’re based on more specific criteria, such as a limit of 2,000 operations per request. As such, you can technically run the API for more than 30 minutes–provided they don’t hit any of the other limits listed in this document.
3) You need to change entities that are not supported via Google Ad Scripts.
If you run into the limitations of scripts, it might be a good time to investigate the possibility of changing the entity via the API.
CONCLUSION
For most operations, you might not need to touch the Google AdWords API at all; Google Ads scripts are easier to create and run, and will get you what you want most of the times.
While Google Ads scripts are easy to use, if you need more advice, you can always schedule a strategy call with me.
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As always, if you want to explore the full functionality of Google Ads scripts but don’t have the technical know-how, I’m here to help. Reach out to me at nils [at] nilsrooijmans.com.
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