If you manage ecommerce PPC accounts in Google Ads, you likely have used Performance Max campaigns since mid-2022. You also know that the insights 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 that spend is broken out through Google’s automation.
Learn how to overcome this hurdle using Google Apps Script to pull data on campaign spend breakout and glean insights to improve performance and impress your clients and team.
Why use Apps Script in Google Ads, Performance Max?
Apps Script is a Google tool enabling you to automate actions in Google Ads using JavaScript code in your account. (Don’t worry, no coding experience is needed for this guide!) This saves time and simplifies management.
Due to a lack of control and insights from Performance Max, some advertisers opt to use standard Shopping campaigns.
While the Insights tab in Google Ads shows audience insights, search term insights and general performance, it does not include the breakout of spend or impressions by campaign type.
If you see high impressions on a campaign or asset group with similar clicks to other campaigns or asset groups, you can only assume that video or display campaigns (awareness-based campaigns with high impressions) were shown over search or Shopping ads.
A script to monitor performance
Mike Rhodes was kind enough to create and share a script with the digital marketing community through GitHub. The most recent version is the 24th, released in April 2023.