AI running Google Ads accounts? Absolute rubbish

adcraft

I love marketing, but I hate the LinkedIn guru circlejerk. Every day it's another 'specialist' telling us they've hooked Claude up to the API and now it runs the whole show. 'No need for expensive partners!' they scream. 'Comment BUY to get the link.' It's pure engagement bait, and it's infecting every platform.

Genuine question for people who actually manage accounts, set up proper conversion tracking, and optimise search intent for years: have any of you let an AI/API combo execute real tasks inside Google Ads?

I struggle to believe hands-off execution is the future. Not anti-AI - I use TrueClicks for data analysis, audits, and copywriting. But when it's time to push structural changes that affect a client's bottom line, I do that manually. No way I'm letting a black box spend someone's budget.

From what colleagues have told me, AI should be an analyst, never the buyer. Expert humans beat AI every time. One person mentioned they're getting close - using it for SQRs by feeding flagged terms and having AI apply reasoning, then emailing the AM a ready-to-upload file. That's smart. Still human review, still human decision.

I've seen one platform that actually automates setup and conversion tracking while improving CPA. But most AI tools are just fancy copywriters. Their keyword suggestions? No better than Planner.

So no, I'm not letting AI do the heavy lifting. Anyone else?

marketingmule

LinkedIn is full of peddlers.

You don't need to be changing account settings often. Let it cook. Step in when needed. The real work happens outside the platform, coordinating and planning with other business departments, tracking effect of other ads on search demand, ongoing experiments.

I have juniors for the mundane crap. I need them for promotions so wiping them out for AI is not future-proofing anything.

24fire

Treating AI as the buyer is like handing a scalpel to a statistician and calling it surgery. analytics points the way, but the final cut belongs to someone who's felt the market's pulse through cycles. an expert buyer reads between the lines AI can't see.

conversionninja

Oh, absolutely. We've been plugging APIs into Google Ads for months now-makes the day-to-day feel slightly less like drowning in spreadsheets. But LinkedIn? That place is a pastel-coloured parade of fake it 'til you make it. Every third post is 'my proprietary framework changed my life', while the reality is most of us are just trying to get the damn campaigns to stop burning budget. The hype is real, the execution is messy.

pixelpusher

A lot of snake oil and bullshit floating around, that's for sure. AI has its uses-automating bid adjustments, pulling basic reports, maybe flagging anomalies-but anyone claiming it replaces a proper strategist is selling something. I've been scaling stores from six to eight figures, and the real value still comes from human intuition around audience segmentation, creative testing, and knowing when to ignore what the machine recommends. LinkedIn is full of people who've never run a real campaign pitching half-baked APIs as the next big thing. They're not.

liamcopy

Yeah, I'm using it. Just not posting about it on LinkedIn.

Found a tool called Codex - a Claude skills library on GitHub. Some guy who clearly knew his stuff.

Applied for Google Ads API access. Took a few days to get basic access.
Also hooked up GA4, GSC, and GTM for read-only.

I've set guardrails so Codex needs a solid "yes" before touching anything under my MCC. So far, it does exactly what it says. I check later anyway.

Not fully hands-off yet. I use it to pull data from multiple sources, analyse, then advise.

For Google Ads, I let it add negatives to campaigns. That's it... for now.

But I can already see where this is going. Next time I start a fresh account for a client, I want to see how far I can push it. Give Codex the right instructions, then let it build the whole account for me.

isa-ecom

Honestly, most of the AI hype in paid ads is just that - hype. i've tested a few platforms that claim to "run the account for you" and they're basically glorified copy generators or keyword stuffers. The ideas LLMs spit out are no better than what the Keyword Planner gives you for free.

there is one tool I've seen that genuinely automates from setup through conversion tracking and actually moves CPA and ROAS in the right direction. But trusting Claude or ChatGPT with a client's budget? Absolutely not. they're useful for saving time if you already know the game, but they don't replace strategy. If it can't handle retention loops or unboxing flows, I'm not interested

emmareach

We're not handing the keys over to AI just yet for pushing live changes, but honestly? It's only a matter of time. right now we're using it for auditing, copywriting, and reasoning - same as you.

For stuff like SQRs and budget pacing, those are basically math problems at their core (if CPA > X AND clicks > Y, then do Z). What we've done is pipe the flagged search terms into a LLM after the maths has already done the heavy lifting. The AI then reviews each candidate, applies reasoning based on our account rules, and decides whether to negate or not. It comments on each one with its rationale. Then it emails the account manager two files: one with all flagged terms and explanations, and one Ads Editor formatted file with the negative keywords ready to go. The AM just reviews and uploads.

Saves a ton of manual grunt work without fully trusting the machine to press the button.

liamcopy

Nope.

Most of those so-called "gurus" are just cherry-picking one lucky test and calling it a revolution.

AI still can't reason. It can ask "does this make sense?" but it has no idea if the answer is actually true.

Serious shops? We use AI for the legwork. But the final click - the actual change - still goes through a human.

Last mile is everything.

metricsmuse

Nah, it's still way beyond that for me - even if it did work, you'd have to customise it for every single account. No shortcut.

marcuthread

Honestly, I'm far from an expert, but I'm not convinced hooking up some AI API to my account does much good.

I have been chatting with Gemini about how to manage one of my campaigns, and it's been surprisingly useful-like getting advice from someone who actually knows their stuff. The funny thing is, Gemini keeps warning me off most of Google's automatic features. you really need to know what you're doing and trust your own judgement when you check in every day.

the whole problem isn't setting up a campaign-you can learn that in a week. The real grind is building the funnel, analysing analytics to spot where it's leaking, growing the negative keyword list as the search terms change, all that boring but critical stuff. Right now I wouldn't let any AI do that without me watching it like a hawk.

chloeest

Test A: Let an AI tool run my Google Ads unchecked. Test B: Review every change through a conversion heatmap first. Guess which one keeps my CPA in line? I've yet to see a single automated setup survive a proper A/B test against manual oversight. The people on LinkedIn flogging "fully autonomous" accounts are either burning money on test budgets they don't care about, or they've never had to explain a sudden spike in cost-per-click to a client. No thanks, I'll stick with human review and a solid data feed.

buggedout

No chance I'd let external AI tools directly access my Google Ads accounts. Fastest way to get client accounts flagged and your agency blacklisted.

ctrjunkie

Haha the LinkedIn AI ad guru circus is out of control. Every time I see another "connect Claude to Google Ads API and watch your ROAS explode" post, it's an instant eye-roll. Pure engagement bait dressed up in buzzwords. I've actually put this to the test - hooked up LLMs to ads APIs - and the results are... meh at best.

The API limits alone make full automation a joke. You can't even reliably pause campaigns based on performance without hitting rate limits or getting flagged for suspicious activity. And good luck getting an AI to understand nuanced brand voice or seasonal trends without constant hand-holding.

That said, there are legit narrow use cases. Generating ad copy variations at scale? Yes. Spotting obvious bidding anomalies? Works. But anyone claiming it replaces human oversight is either lying or running the simplest campaigns imaginable.

The most useful AI application I've found is auditing account structure and hunting wasted spend patterns. Takes what would be hours of manual digging and surfaces insights in minutes. Still needs a human to validate and act on it though.

Randomly joined the waitlist for something called Hoox recently - it claims to be an autonomous AI CMO that posts daily on TikTok and Instagram for virality, writes daily SEO articles, creates YouTube videos for AI search rankings, monitors Reddit and X 24/7 for relevant conversations to drive traffic, and all of that compounds into a customer acquisition system. Also comes with a Telegram AI agent that supposedly handles real-world tasks. Curious to see if it actually works as advertised, but the approach feels different from the usual AI ads hype. https://joinhoox.com

What's your real experience been like trying to automate any part of your Google Ads workflow? Any tools or scripts that have genuinely saved you time?

storyweaver

AI is too unreliable to not QA its decisions, Meta you can get an account ban too

funnelhacker

The ROI on letting AI fully run your account is negative in my experience. Useful for analysis and spotting patterns? Sure. But trusting a black box with budgets, targeting, and business context without human oversight? That's a fast track to burning cash. LinkedIn loves the oversimplified narrative, the real winners keep their hands on the levers.

zoecreative

Honestly, most of that noise is just professional social networks talking themselves in circles.

AI is brilliant for surfacing patterns, pulling reports, and sparking creative angles-but the actual strategy and execution? still very much a human game. One rogue automated bid adjustment or misread signal can crater an account before you've had your morning coffee.

Right now the smartest setup is AI in the passenger seat, not behind the wheel. assist, don't replace

ryanseo

I built/am building an AI agent to manage my PPC accounts. Happy to honestly answer any questions about what works well and what doesn’t work well.

I will say that I don’t really believe in off-the-shelf tools for AI Agents. They just don’t know enough about the client to be useful.

sophiasaas

Used the Google Ads API myself via a manager account to pull data and do my own analysis. The browser interface is just too restrictive once you've got a decent amount of data flowing. Getting everything onto your own machine opens up way more flexibility - it's not advanced stuff, anyone with some dev background can set it up. But the average person? Not happening without help.

I haven't connected any AI models to Google Ads either. The skills gap is real, and honestly, I think it's naive to assume an AI will run campaigns better than a human. That's my honest take - no plans to go there for performance reasons. Keep it human, keep it transparent.