Building Entity Deep Links with AdWords Scripts

I was trying to build a report on problems in an account and I was thinking to myself, "Man, it sure would be nice to deep link directly to the entity that was having issues." Then I realized that is the script change logs could do it, I probably could too.

It turns out, there are two magic numbers that you need in order to get this to work. When you login to your account, in the url, you will see __u= and __c=. According to this blog post, these values are the 'effectiveUserId' and 'customerId' respectively. Unfortunately, there isn't a way to access these values when using scripts, so you will have to manually copy them into the script below.

After that, you can include the function in all your scripts and deep link to your heart's content. It isn't the prettiest thing in the world but it is self contained so it should be easy to copy into the bottom of your scripts.

Thanks,
Russ

  // Link to the Keyword Tab of the AdGroup
  Logger.log(getUrl(someAdGroupEntity,'Keywords'));
  // Link to the Ads Tab of the AdGroup
  Logger.log(getUrl(someAdGroupEntity,'Ads'));      
  // Link to Location Settings Tab of the Campaign
  Logger.log(getUrl(comeCampaignEntity,'Settings:Locations')); 

/***********************************
* Build Deep Link Urls for Entities
* Version 1.0 
* Created By: Russ Savage
* FreeAdWordsScripts.com
***********************************/
function getUrl(entity,tab) {
  var customerId = '__c from the url';
  var effectiveUserId = '__u from the url';
  var decodedTab = getTab(tab);  
  
  var base = 'https://adwords.google.com/cm/CampaignMgmt?';
  var url = base+'__c='+customerId+'&__u='+effectiveUserId+'#';
  
  if(typeof entity['getBudget'] !== 'undefined') {
    //A Campaign
    return url+'c.'+entity.getId()+'.'+decodedTab+'&app=cm';
  }
  if(typeof entity['createKeyword'] !== 'undefined') {
    //An AdGroup
    return url+'a.'+entity.getId()+'_'+entity.getCampaign().getId()+'.'+decodedTab+'&app=cm';
  }
  if(typeof entity['getMatchType'] !== 'undefined') {
    //A Keyword
    return url+'a.'+entity.getAdGroup().getId()+'_'+entity.getCampaign().getId()+'.key&app=cm';
  }
  if(typeof entity['getHeadline'] !== 'undefined') {
    //An Ad
    return url+'a.'+entity.getAdGroup().getId()+'_'+entity.getCampaign().getId()+'.create&app=cm';
  }
  return url+'r.ONLINE.di&app=cm';
  
  function getTab(tab) {
    var mapping = {
      'Ad groups':'ag','Settings:All settings':'st_sum',
      'Settings:Locations':'st_loc','Settings:Ad schedule':'st_as',
      'Settings:Devices':'st_p','Ads':'create',
      'Keywords':'key','Audiences':'au','Ad extensions':'ae',
      'Auto targets':'at','Dimensions' : 'di'
    };
    if(mapping[tab]) { return mapping[tab]; }
    return 'key'; //default to keyword tab
  }
}

Disable Ads and Keywords For Out of Stock Items

UPDATE 2016-01-26: In response to some common issues, this script has been updated to include some enhancements. Please see the change log notes for v1.2.

As a follow up to my questions about cool scripts for Black Friday / Cyber Monday, today I put together a script to run through your urls and check if the item is out of stock on the website. If it is, we will pause the AdGroup.

This script has some of the same elements of my script on checking for broken links in your account, but it actually pulls the html source of each page and searches for a configurable string that lets it know when it is out of stock.

Let's walk through an example. I love some of the quirky gifts I find on ModCloth.com. But like any online store, some items go out of stock. Here is one I found while testing this script.

In order to get this script to work, I need to find out what is different about the page when it goes out of stock. If I right click and view the page source, and search for the work "stock", I can see a few different places where it is used. One of them is the following that says "in_stock":false.

That looks promising. I check on an in stock item and sure enough, "in_stock":true is on that page.

Alright, so now I know what text I need to use to fill in the OUT_OF_STOCK_TEXT variable in my code. Now each site is going to be a little different, so I have a simple script that uses the same url logic as the complete script that you can use for testing.

Once you find some HTML text in the source of the landing page that identifies if an item is out of stock, you should be good to go on the full script. There are a few other options in the script that allow you to enable or disable various url manipulations in the script. And remember, this will pause only the Ads or Keywords that link to the page with the out of stock item.

Thanks,
Russ

Use AdWords Scripts To Automate Black Friday

Black Friday is quickly approaching for retailers in the United States. I have some ideas for ways that you can automate your campaigns using AdWords Scripts, but I'd love to get your thoughts on some of them.  Here's what I can think of.  Please comment with the ones that you'd like to see most.

• Countdown Script - Similar to this script from Google but read the information from a Google doc and add support for timezones.
• Add Pricing, Inventory, and percent discount to Creatives - Use a Google Spreadsheet to update prices and inventory for your items. That info will be read by the script get updated in the Ads hourly.
• Automatically Pause Ads as Items Go Out of Stock - This script will monitor your landing pages and pause the ads once it sees that the item is no longer in stock.
• Update Mobile Modifiers and Location Modifiers for Retail Locations Throughout the Day - This script would start with a boost to specific location and mobile modifiers for your campaigns and then slowly ramp them back down throughout the day. Set the end time and it will automatically calculate the ramp down.

Those are just a few ideas I had.  Do you have a better idea? Would you like to see one of the scripts above?  Let me know by leaving a comment.  I'll implement the winner by the end of October.

Thanks,
Russ

Use GDrive To Load A Single AdWords Script Into Multiple Accounts

One of the downsides to using AdWords Scripts is that you need to log into each account and set up the script. For most people, that isn't a problem the first few times. But as you start seeing the value of some of these scripts, there might be a set of them that you want to put in all your accounts. Setting them up is fine, until you find a bug in your code and have to go in and update all 20 copies of the script in each account.

Well in this post, I put together a simple way to keep a single copy of your script and load it into any number of AdWords accounts. Then, if you ever have a change to make, you can update a single version of the script and all the accounts will instantly start using the new code.

The code for this consists of two parts. The first snippet of code is the generic code that you need to place in each one of your accounts. This code references a single Google Spreadsheet (here is a sample one for you to copy: http://goo.gl/y6hPfy) that it uses to know what scripts it is supposed to run. The spreadsheet has only 3 columns: A description which is just used for logging, the location of the script in Google Drive, and the Object Name in the script. Don't worry about that right now, I will describe it better in the next section. Finally, it loads the script file and executes the main function.

/************************************
 * Generic Script Runner
 * Version 1.0
 * Created By: Russ Savage
 * FreeAdWordsScripts.com
 ***********************************/
function main() {
  //See http://goo.gl/KvINmD for an example spreadsheet.
  var scriptConfigId = 'Your Spreadsheet Id Goes Here';
  var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.openById(scriptConfigId).getActiveSheet();
  var data = sheet.getRange('A:C').getValues();
  for(var i in data) {
    if(i == 0) { continue; }
    var [description, location, classname] = data[i];
    if(!location) { continue; }
    Logger.log('Running "'+description+'" from location: '+location);
    var scriptFile = getFile(location);
    var scriptText = scriptFile.getBlob().getDataAsString();
    eval(scriptText);
    var script = eval('new '+classname+'();');
    script.main();
  }
}
 
//This function gets the file from GDrive
function getFile(loc) {
  var locArray = loc.split('/');
  var folder = getFolder(loc);
  if(folder.getFilesByName(locArray[locArray.length-1]).hasNext()) {
    return folder.getFilesByName(locArray[locArray.length-1]).next();
  } else {
    return null;
  }
}
 
//This function finds the folder for the file and creates folders if needed
function getFolder(folderPath) {
  var folder = DriveApp.getRootFolder();
  if(folderPath) {
    var pathArray = folderPath.split('/');
    for(var i in pathArray) {
      if(i == pathArray.length - 1) { break; }
      var folderName = pathArray[i];
      if(folder.getFoldersByName(folderName).hasNext()) {
        folder = folder.getFoldersByName(folderName).next();
      }
    }
  }
  return folder;
}

Now that we have a generic piece of code that reads the description, location, and object name from a spreadsheet and executes code, we need to make some slight modifications to some of our existing scripts to get it to work.

One of my favorite scripts is the one about Finding Anomalies in Your Account. In order for the script to be run from another script, we need to convert it into an object with a single public function. This same technique should work on almost all of the scripts from FreeAdWordsScripts.com.

First, surround the entire script in a function call and give it whatever name you like.

function Anomalies() {
 // Copy and Paste the code from:
 // http://goo.gl/IT1UcV
};

Next, you need to update the main function to be a public method so that we can call it from our generic script.

this.main = function() {
 // Don't make any changes to the body of the main method
}

A full version of the updated code can be found here: Find Anomalies in Your Account Object Version.

Now you can save this new script somewhere in your GDrive and update the Location and Object Name (Anomalies in this case) in your config spreadsheet.

Now you should be good to go. You can add as many scripts as you like to the config spreadsheet but keep in mind that the 30 minute limit still applies.

Thanks,
Russ