Google Ads
Query accounts with the Google Ads Query Language, and create or change budgets, campaigns, ad groups and keywords.
A Google Ads connection gives a playbook's functions the Google Ads API, from a document Auto ships. You sign in to Google and allow Google Ads, and the connection acts as you, for the accounts your Google account can reach. If you reach client accounts through a manager account, give its customer ID when you connect, and Auto sends it with every call as login-customer-id; connect an account directly and leave it empty.
Available on Auto Cloud and on self-hosted runtimes.
What a playbook can do with Google Ads
- Run any GAQL query, in one answer or streamed, over campaigns, ad groups, ads, keywords, search terms and their metrics.
- List the customers you can reach and the report fields a query may name.
- Create or change campaign budgets, campaigns, ad groups and ad group criteria such as keywords.
The queries are marked as tools that only read, so a lookup function can run them; the changes are marked as ones that act.
The tools, as the connection lists them
Tools that read: googleads.customers.listAccessibleCustomers, googleads.customers.googleAds.search, googleads.customers.googleAds.searchStream, googleads.googleAdsFields.search and googleads.googleAdsFields.get.
Tools that act: googleads.customers.googleAds.mutate, googleads.customers.campaigns.mutate, googleads.customers.campaignBudgets.mutate, googleads.customers.adGroups.mutate and googleads.customers.adGroupCriteria.mutate.
An example workflow
A weekly search-terms review, the way your account manager does it. A schedule trigger runs the workflow on Monday morning. A lookup function runs one GAQL query for last week's search terms with their clicks, cost and conversions. A computation function keeps the terms that spent above a threshold and converted nothing. A reasoning function reads them with the brand's negative-keyword rules in its prompt and proposes which to add as negatives and which to leave, with a reason each. An interaction function sends the proposal to the account manager through a Slack or Outlook connection and waits for approval. Only once approved does an interaction function add the negatives through the ad group criteria operation, one run per ad group, and the run's history in Studio shows every term, the decision and the change made.
How to connect Google Ads
- Sign in to Google and allow Google Ads. The consent screen shows the permissions listed below.
Then:
- Ask your agent to connect Google Ads to Auto, or open Settings, Agents, Connections in Auto Studio and choose Google Ads.
- On the Studio page, check the service and its access, choose which playbooks may use the connection, and approve it.
- Have your agent check one small read through the connection before a function depends on it.
Auto asks for one value when you connect:
| Value | What it is |
|---|---|
manager_id, optional | The customer ID of the manager account you reach other accounts through, ten digits without hyphens; leave it empty when you connect an account directly. |
What it needs
- A Google account with access to the Google Ads accounts the playbook works in, directly or through a manager account.
- Your agent connected to Auto and signed in as you, with permission to change your organization, if your agent adds the connection.
- On a self-hosted runtime, a Google Cloud project of your own with the Google Ads API enabled, with Explorer access or more before a production account connects, and an OAuth client registered for the runtime, as Let people add connections sets out.
Google grants Google Ads as one scope, adwords, which covers reading and changing. A playbook that should only report gives its functions the query tools alone; a lookup function cannot call a mutate operation.
Permissions Auto asks for
- See, create, change and delete Google Ads accounts and data.
Good to know
A query's rows are kept in the run's history, where people with access to the playbook can read them. The Google Ads API's own limits on operations a day apply to the account as they would to any tool.