Skip to main content

Turn on an automation

Every recommended automation is a card in Settings > Automations (/settings/automations), and every one starts off. Your automation settings apply to every Google Ads account that you connect, not only the active account.

To turn on an automation:

  1. Click your profile picture at the bottom of the sidebar, then click Settings.
  2. Click Automations.
  3. Make sure that a Google Ads account is active in the account switcher. The switches stay disabled until an account is active.
  4. Click the switch on the card of the automation.
  5. Read the preview.
  6. Click Turn on automation.

The preview shows only the first time you turn on an automation. You cannot skip it. If you turn the automation off and on again later, no preview shows.

Automations run only while daily checks run. While daily checks are off, the page shows the offer Fix problems while you are away. See Monitoring and the daily rate.

Read the preview​

The preview is different for the two types of recommended automation.

Block wasting search terms and Lift the budget. These automations start from an alert. Their preview is What would have happened. It shows:

  • Would have fired. The number of actions that the automation would have taken, based on recent data.
  • Blocked by guard. The number of actions that a guard would have stopped, for example the brand protection, the daily limit, or the Smart Bidding exclusion.
  • Estimated impact. A rough estimate of the spend involved.
  • A list of items. Each search term or campaign, with Would have fired or the guard that blocked it and the reason.

This preview does not apply the age check, cooldowns, the weekly limit or the budget simulation. So the real number of actions can be lower. For Block wasting search terms, a note tells you that the minimum ad-group age check also applies when the automation runs.

Pause pure waste keywords, Ease CPA targets and Ease ROAS targets. These automations have a built in rule. Their confirmation is Turn on "name"?, with the name of the automation. It shows the rule, the number of times the rule would have acted in the last 30 days, and the safety limits.

If nothing would have fired, the preview tells you. The automation then waits until the condition occurs. Click Turn on automation to confirm, or click Cancel to keep the automation off.

Which limits you can change​

Automations that start from an alert have limits that you can change. On the Block wasting search terms and Lift the budget cards, open Safety limits. The limits show as a sentence with numbers in it. You can change the numbers only after you turn the automation on.

  1. Open the card.
  2. Open Safety limits.
  3. Click a number and change it.

Changes save automatically. To use the default values again, click Reset to recommended.

Block wasting search terms limits:

  • Most negatives added per day. Default 20, from 1 to 100. The count is per account and per UTC day.
  • Days before touching the same term again. Default 14, from 1 to 90.
  • Minimum ad-group age in days. Default 60, from 0 to 180. Google rarely reports the age of an ad group, so Hero Marketer uses the campaign start date. If neither date is known, the automation skips the term.

Lift the budget limits:

  • Largest single raise (%). Each raise is exactly this percentage of the current daily budget. Default 25%, from 5% to 50%.
  • Largest weekly growth (%). The most that the budget of one campaign can grow in any 7 days, from all budget raises together. Default 50%, from 10% to 100%.
  • Days between raises to one campaign. Default 7, from 1 to 30.
  • A fixed limit of 3 budget raises per account each day also applies. You cannot change it.

Automations with a built in rule have fixed limits. Pause pure waste keywords, Ease CPA targets on overperformers and Ease ROAS targets on overperformers have no numbers that you can change. You can only turn them on or off. Their rules are fixed:

  • The keyword pause acts on more than 50 of spend in your account's currency over 7 days, with no conversions.
  • The target changes act at 0.7 times and 1.3 times the campaign's 28-day average.
  • Their cooldowns and daily limits are also fixed.

For different numbers, build a custom automation on the same signal.

Brand keywords​

Block wasting search terms has a Brand keywords to never auto touch list. Hero Marketer always protects your product name, so you do not add it. Add other brand terms or competitor terms to the list. Block wasting search terms never adds a negative for a search term that contains one of these terms.

To add a term:

  1. Open the Block wasting search terms card.
  2. Open Brand keywords to never auto touch.
  3. Type the term in the Add a brand keyword field.
  4. Click Add.

To remove a term, click the X next to it. Changes save automatically.

Hero Marketer matches each term as a whole word or phrase, and ignores case. For example, "acme" protects "buy acme" and "acme pricing", but not "nacme". Hero Marketer does not find misspellings or other forms of a term.

Hero Marketer protects the name of one product on each Google Ads account. The product that onboarding creates has the name of your Google Ads account. If that name is not your brand name, rename the product in Settings > Products. See Update a product. If the account has more than one product, add the other product names to the list.

Pause pure waste keywords protects only your product name, and it has no list. Brand keywords on the Block wasting search terms card do not apply to it. If you bid on brand keywords that do not contain your product name, keep Pause pure waste keywords off.

You cannot exclude a campaign or keyword​

You cannot exclude one campaign, ad group or keyword from an automation. If you manage a campaign by hand, keep the automation off. Or revert any change that it makes from Automation history.

The trigger alert warning​

Block wasting search terms and Lift the budget each start from an alert. The Triggers when section of the card names that alert. If you turned that alert type off in your alert preferences, the card shows a warning. The automation cannot act until you turn the alert on again.

To turn the alert on again, click Open alert settings on the card. The automation then acts on the next new alert. The three automations with a built in rule do not depend on a built in alert type.

Turn off an automation​

Click the switch on the card to turn an automation off. Future actions stop at once, on all your Google Ads accounts. Hero Marketer keeps the history and the cooldowns. If you turn the automation on again later, it still knows what it changed before.

Daily checks cost 0.25 credits a day for each connected account. To stop that charge, turn off all 17 alert types and all automations. Or disconnect the account.

Next​