Advanced Google Ads script to forecast ad performance

Creating accurate projections of your future paid search spend is a really important part of your overall media buying plan.

How often have you been asked, how many leads would we get if we increase media spend by X.

Or considering that our conversion rate is 19% better year on year, how many more leads will we get this year.

The truth is though that putting projections together is tedious and time consuming.

So as we do with any boring, tedious but repeatable task, the developers at Clicteq (my employer) put together this advanced Google Ads script that creates forecasts for you based on past performance.

How the script works

The script analyses the performance from the last month and compares this to the performance of the same month the year before.

It then analyzes the changes in performance for all of the metric, for example if conversion rates have increased or if CTR is lower for example.

It then applies these same changes to the performance of last year to create projections for the next 12 months.

The script also allows you to model out scenarios, for example if you wanted to spend 10% more it would create projections with an additional 10% of spend.

It’s worth noting here though that the bigger the difference that you input the less accurate the projections because there is not always a linear correlation between CPCs.

How to setup the script

Before you run the script, however there are a couple of things that you need to change.

1. You will first need to create a new Google Sheet. This is where the script will output the projections too, once you have created a new sheet copy the URL.
2. On line 17, you can change which campaigns you want to include. To include all of the campaigns that contain the term “brand” for example, you would enter the word “brand” here. If on the other hand, you want to include all of the campaigns, then just leave this field blank.
3. On line 20 you should enter the URL of the Google sheet that you want to output your forecasts (created in step 1).
4. On line 30 is where you select increments of forecasts. If you want to see the metrics broken down by week then enter “Week.” If you want them monthly then enter “Month” or for quarterly enter “Quarter.”
5. On line 31 you can configure how the cost will change. If you want the budget to stay the same then enter “1”. To increase the budget by 20% then enter “1.2” or to decrease the budget by 25% then enter “0.75”.
6. On line 32 you can configure which currency that your account runs in, this should be the symbol that denotes the currency, for example “£” or “$”.

Here’s the Google Ads script

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About The Author

Wesley Parker

Wesley is managing director at Clicteq. He currently manages a $4M-plus Google Ads portfolio across a range of different sectors. He regularly writes in leading marketing publications such as Econsultancy and Campaign Magazine.