Build a custom automation
The five recommended automations are cards Hero Marketer authored. A custom automation is one you compose yourself, from the same grammar Hero Marketer used to build those cards: pick a money signal, set the condition, and choose the action it takes when the condition holds. A custom automation runs through the same guard pipeline and audit log as the recommended ones. You can revert it with one click. Only the recipe is yours.
Compose one from Settings → Automations (/settings/automations): the custom automation section sits below the recommended cards. Click Create custom automation to open the composer.
Custom automations are the escape hatch for variants the cards do not cover. Examples are a different dollar threshold, a different baseline window, or a second rule on the same signal. If a recommended card already does what you want, enable that instead. See Recommended automations.
The shape of a custom automation
Every custom automation is one sentence: when [signal] [rises above / falls below] [threshold], [take this action]. You build it in three parts.
1. Pick a signal
The composer offers the money signals that support an action. Each signal is a daily series Hero Marketer already tracks:
- Cost per conversion (campaign). A campaign's CPA.
- Return on ad spend (campaign). A campaign's ROAS.
- Wasted spend (keyword). A keyword's spend over the recent window when it converted zero times in that window.
These are the only signals available in the automations composer, because Hero Marketer offers an action only where the underlying change is safe, reversible, and mechanical at that grain. Other metrics Hero Marketer watches — account daily spend, campaign impressions, ad approval status — carry no automated action. So they do not appear here. Those signals only send notifications from the alerts side.
2. Set the condition
- Direction. Whether the rule fires when the signal rises above or falls below the threshold. The composer locks the direction to the one that is coherent with your chosen action. So you cannot build a rule that automatically wastes money. For example, the composer refuses "ROAS falls, raise the budget".
- Threshold. Either a multiple of the signal's own baseline (for example, 1.3× its average over the previous 28 days) or, for wasted spend, an absolute dollar amount (for example, $50). A baseline threshold scales with the account's own history, not a fixed number.
- Baseline window and type. When you use a multiple of the baseline, choose whether to use the previous 14 or 28 days and whether the baseline is the average, the median, or the same weekday.
- Checks in a row. How many consecutive monitoring passes the condition must hold before the automation acts, so a single noisy day does not trigger it.
3. Choose the action
The actions available depend on the signal you picked, because each signal only exposes the actions that are safe at its grain:
| Signal | Available actions |
|---|---|
| Cost per conversion (campaign) | Lower its daily budget · Raise its CPA target |
| Return on ad spend (campaign) | Raise its daily budget · Lower its ROAS target |
| Wasted spend (keyword) | Pause the keyword |
For a budget or target action, you also set the percentage to change it by per execution. A keyword pause has no magnitude, so there is no percentage to set.
Name the automation and save it. Like the recommended automations, a custom automation previews what it would have done over the last 30 days before it can act. You confirm it the same way. See Turn on an automation.
The safety caps are fixed per action
You set the threshold and, for budget and target actions, the percentage. The safety caps come with the action, and you cannot edit them. They are the same caps that protect the recommended automations:
- Lower or raise the daily budget. Wait 7 days before the automation changes the same campaign again. Allow at most 3 changes per UTC day. Limit the cumulative change to 50% over any rolling week. The automation never lowers the daily budget below $1. It skips Smart Bidding campaigns when it raises the budget, and it runs Google's own budget simulation as an advisory check. When a simulation curve exists, a raise only executes if the curve projects additional conversions at the new budget.
- Pause the keyword. Wait 14 days before the automation pauses the same keyword again. Allow at most 3 pauses per UTC day. The automation never pauses brand keywords. The campaign must also be at least 60 days old, so delayed conversions have time to report.
- Raise the CPA target or lower the ROAS target. Wait 14 days before the automation changes the same campaign again. This respects the learning period for Google's bid strategy. Allow at most 2 changes per UTC day. Limit the cumulative change to 20% over any rolling week. Limit each change to 15%. Only campaigns that already use that target qualify. The automation never changes the strategy itself.
What the composer cannot do
- It changes targets and budgets, never bid strategies. A custom automation can nudge a Target CPA or Target ROAS, but it cannot switch a campaign onto or off a strategy.
- It does not pause or restructure campaigns or ad groups. The only pause action is on a single keyword. A whole-campaign pause is too large a blast radius for unattended action. Ask Hero AI to do that instead. Hero AI acts only with your confirmation.
- It is not a general scripting surface. A custom automation is one signal, one condition, one action. For a fix that needs judgment or a single change to a specific campaign, Hero AI is the better path. Open the alert and click Analyze with Hero AI.
Manage custom automations
Hero Marketer lists your custom automations in the same section of Settings → Automations, with the same enable/disable toggle, preview, and history as the recommended cards. If you delete a custom automation, it stops immediately. Its past actions stay in your automation history and remain reversible.