If you manage eCommerce PPC accounts in Google Ads, chances are you’ve been using Peak Performance campaigns since mid-2022. You also know that statistics and reporting are limited.
We can’t control how much of our budget goes to top-of-funnel strategies like video, display, and discovery campaigns.
We can’t see how this spend is distributed through Google’s automation.
Learn how to overcome this hurdle by using Google Apps Script to get campaign spend data and insights to improve performance and impress your clients and team.
Why use Apps Script in Google Ads, maximum performance?
Apps Script is a Google tool that allows you to automate actions in Google Ads using JavaScript code in your account. (Don’t worry, no coding experience is required for this guide!) This saves time and simplifies management.
Due to the lack of control and insights from Performance Max, some advertisers choose to use standard Shopping campaigns.
While the Google Ads Statistics tab shows audience statistics, search term statistics, and overall performance, it doesn’t include a breakdown of spend or impressions by campaign type.
If you see high impressions in a campaign or resource group with similar clicks to other campaigns or resource groups, you can only assume that video or display campaigns (awareness campaigns with high impressions) were shown on search or purchases
A script to monitor performance
Mike Rhodes was kind enough to create and share a script with the digital marketing community GitHub. The most recent version is version 24, released in April 2023.
The instructions for installing the script start with the copy this template in Google Sheets.
Now grab the url from your sheet and enter it below on the line starting with let ss =. Enclose the URL in single quotes.
Then name your script: “YOUR CLIENT”: pMax Charts
Name your sheet: “YOUR CLIENT” – pMax v24 charts (daily updates)
Google will then ask you to authorize the script to access your Google Ads account. Note that this will not change or update your ads in any way. Just extract the data to send to Google Sheets.
Once authorized, save and run your script!
You want to set your script to run daily. I recommend using it first thing in the morning when you’re not in the Google Ads system.
Insights from the report
Now that you have the report up and running, you can extract statistics from the report. The report only shows the last 30 days.
One cool thing is to see how Google prioritizes campaign types.
In the example below, you’ll see that over the last 30 days, this campaign has allocated 100% of its cost to Shopping ads. Note that “Other” is primarily search ads.
This may indicate that products in this category are consistently showing shopping ads as top-of-the-page results in the SERP.
In the example below, in the same account, you’ll see that the campaign is showing most Shopping ads with budget, but it’s also showing Search and Video.
Try running test searches to see if those searches for the products in that particular campaign show consistent Shopping results at the top of the SERP, or if the results tend to be search ads. This may explain the lower distribution of Shopping.
Another thing that can indicate this is ROAS. If you’re using TROAS in your campaign and you’re consistently under-target, Google may try different campaign types to reach that TROAS if it recognizes that Shopping ads won’t achieve it.
Optimizations based on information
Use these stats and predictions for quizzes!
In the first example, where all spend went to Shopping, try increasing the ROAS limits you can achieve by gradually increasing your target ROAS bid.
In the second example above, try lowering your target ROAS bid to see if the distribution of Shopping ad spend increases.
I recommend increasing only in 25-50% increments to avoid causing a sudden drop in performance.
In the example below, you’ll see that for the week of May 7th, we increased our ROAS goal too drastically.
It caused a drop in our performance, indicated by a sharp increase in impressions due to the display of video ads.
With this tool, we were able to track allocation daily and return our ROAS target to its original target.
The report also has tabs with table views of data by campaign and asset groups.
Beyond that, there are tabs with graphs showing the performance of asset groups by:
Impression cost conversion value
Below is an Impressions resource group report for a campaign with four resource groups. In-market/affinity audiences receive many more impressions than their counterparts.
You want to investigate the first chart again. Does this campaign have a high video or display spend allocation? Could this explain the high impressions on this particular asset group?
You’ll also want to check out the chart report by asset group. You will see the high impressions in In Market/ Affinity, but we will also see lower cost per acquisition of any asset group in this campaign!
Now use this information to update the audience signals of other campaigns that match this resource group, and do the same for your resources.
Filling data gaps using scripts
Try other available scripts based on your customers’ needs and learn Google Apps Script to create your own.
As Google takes data and control away from marketers, there are ways to fill the data gaps through shared scripts across the digital marketing community.
The views expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
