Challenge

Creating paid search promotions was quickly burning through analyst hours – particularly over peak sale periods like Black Friday and Christmas. Coupled with the margin for human error, promo building was a prime candidate for automation.

Our approach

Automate the process

Using a combination of Google Ads and Google Sheets scripts, our Media Innovation team built a tool to tackle the time-consuming manual process.

It’s written in JavaScript, creating a form that clients or delivery teams can fill out to schedule a promotion.

The user simply enters the promo details and ad messaging. The tool then stores the data in a Google Sheets Dashboard and a Google Ads script digests this data every hour; building, scheduling, publishing and pausing any promos it finds.

It can also pause BAU ad copy once promos have launched, and reenable afterwards – again, all automatically.

Stay dynamic

To keep ads personalised and relevant, without having to worry about complex syntax, users can add dynamic placeholder text. By specifying “COUNTDOWN” or “BAUCOPY” in the template, it’s easy to drop in countdowns and ad group-specific BAU elements.

Keep things flexible

Promo messaging and timings often need last-minute tweaks – even while an ad is running. So we made sure ads and sitelinks can be updated at any time by editing the tool dashboard – no more fiddling with bulksheets or the Google Ads interface!

Results

• Time spent building promos has fallen by 90%

• Error rate has dropped to zero