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What automations do

Automations let Hero Marketer fix some of the problems that it finds, not only tell you about them. An automation acts on its own. It does not show an approval card for each change. Every automation is off until you turn it on.

The first time you turn on a recommended automation, Hero Marketer shows a preview and asks you to confirm. The preview is an estimate from recent data, and it does not apply every safety limit. A custom automation starts when you save it, after you tick the confirmation box.

Automations do not manage your account for you, and they do not replace your strategy. They do a small set of routine fixes that teams usually do by hand each time the same problem occurs again.

Hero Marketer has five recommended automations. Each one is a card in Settings > Automations. To open Settings, click your profile picture at the bottom of the sidebar, then click Settings. Two automations start from an alert. The other three have a built in rule. All five are off by default.

  • Block wasting search terms starts from the Search terms wasting budget alert. It adds the search term as an exact match negative keyword on the ad group that spent the money.
  • Lift the budget on profitable campaigns being capped starts from the Profitable campaign capped by budget alert. It raises that campaign's daily budget, by 25% by default. The alert needs only some conversion value (ROAS above 0), not a profit.
  • Pause pure waste keywords pauses a keyword that spent more than 50 in your account's currency in the last 7 days, with zero conversions.
  • Ease CPA targets on overperformers raises a campaign's Target CPA by 10% when its cost per conversion stays well below its 28-day average.
  • Ease ROAS targets on overperformers lowers a campaign's Target ROAS by 10% when its return on ad spend stays well above its 28-day average.

The exact triggers, actions and safety limits for all five are in Recommended automations.

Custom automations​

You can also build your own automation. Pick a signal, set the condition, and choose the action. A custom automation uses the same safety checks and the same history as the recommended automations, and you can revert each action. Use a custom automation for a case that the recommended cards do not cover, for example a different spend threshold. See Build a custom automation.

When and where automations run​

  • All the accounts in a business. The recommended automation settings belong to the active business. When you turn one on, it runs on every account in that business that Hero Marketer monitors. Another business keeps its own settings. A custom automation runs only on the account that was active when you saved it.
  • Once a day. Automations check each account once a day, at 06:00 in the account's time zone.
  • Only on new problems. An automation acts only when its trigger finds a new problem. If the same problem stays active, the automation does not act on it again.
  • Search campaigns. Block wasting search terms, Pause pure waste keywords and the two Ease automations act only on enabled Search campaigns. They never act on Performance Max, Display, Video or Shopping campaigns.
  • Newly connected accounts. On the first check of a newly connected account, Hero Marketer does not wait for the checks in a row that a rule needs. If an automation is on when you connect another Google Ads account, it can act on that account during the free scan.
  • Every platform in the active business. The recommended automations work on Google Ads accounts only. A custom automation also works on a LinkedIn Ads or Meta Ads account, where it can raise or lower a campaign's daily budget. When the business has more than one platform, click a platform logo at the top of Settings > Automations to choose the account. Automation history shows the actions on every account of the business.

What automations cost​

Automations use no credits for each action or preview. They run only while daily checks run. Daily checks cost 0.25 credits a day for each connected account, and this charge covers alerts and automations together. When your credits run out, automations continue for 3 days, then stop.

While daily checks are off, Settings > Automations and the Automation history page show the offer Fix problems while you are away. See Monitoring and the daily rate.

Where automations live​

  • Settings > Automations (/settings/automations) is where you turn on, set up and preview an automation. Each recommended automation is a card. The card shows what the automation does, a preview of what it would have done, and its safety limits. The Custom automations section is at the bottom of the same page.
  • Automations in the sidebar, under Monitoring, opens the Automation history page at /automations. Each row shows the action, the search term, keyword or campaign, a status, and when it ran. Applied rows have a Revert button.

The safety model​

Each action must pass a set of guards before it runs.

  • Off by default. Every automation starts off.
  • Confirmation before the first start. The first time you turn on a recommended automation, you must read a preview and click Turn on automation. Before you save a custom automation, you must tick a confirmation box.
  • Brand protection. Block wasting search terms never adds a negative for a search term that contains your product name or a brand keyword from its card. Pause pure waste keywords protects only your product name. If you bid on brand keywords that do not contain your product name, keep Pause pure waste keywords off. Hero Marketer does not find misspellings or other forms of your brand.
  • Minimum age for zero conversion actions. By default, Block wasting search terms does not act on an ad group that is younger than 60 days. You can change this limit on its card. Pause pure waste keywords does not act on a campaign that is younger than 60 days. Conversions can take time to report, so zero conversions on a new item do not always mean waste. If Hero Marketer does not know the age, the automation skips the item. Budget and target actions have no age check.
  • Smart Bidding exclusion. Budget automations skip any campaign on Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize conversions, Maximize conversion value, or Target impression share. This applies to raises and to lowers. You cannot turn off this exclusion. Hero Marketer knows the bid strategy of Search campaigns only. For other campaign types, only the budget simulation check can stop a raise.
  • Existing target guard. The Ease automations act only on campaigns that have a Target CPA or Target ROAS set. This includes Maximize conversions or Maximize conversion value campaigns that have a target.
  • Budget simulation check. Before a budget raise, Hero Marketer reads Google's budget simulation. If the simulation predicts no extra conversions at the new budget, Hero Marketer skips the raise. If no simulation is available, the raise continues.
  • Cooldown. After an automation acts on an item, it waits a set number of days before it acts on that item again.
  • Daily cap. Each automation acts a limited number of times per UTC day on each account.

For Block wasting search terms and Lift the budget, you can change some limits on the card. For the three automations with a built in rule, the thresholds and limits are fixed. You can only turn them on or off. See Turn on an automation.

The preview​

The first time you turn on a recommended automation, Hero Marketer shows a preview. You must click Turn on automation after you read it. You cannot skip the preview. If you turn the automation off and on again later, no preview shows.

  • Block wasting search terms and Lift the budget. The preview is What would have happened. It shows how many actions would have fired, how many a guard blocked, and an estimated impact. It uses recent data. It does not apply the age check, cooldowns, the weekly limit or the budget simulation, so the real number of actions can be lower.
  • The three automations with a built in rule. The confirmation shows the rule, how many times it would have acted in the last 30 days, and the safety limits.

You can revert every action​

Hero Marketer records every automation action on the Automation history page at /automations. You can revert each Applied action one time. A revert changes the item back in Google Ads, and the row then shows Reverted.

What a revert does depends on the action. A revert removes a negative keyword or enables a paused keyword again. For a budget or target, a revert restores the value from just before that action. You can revert actions in any order. A budget or target revert replaces any later change to the same budget or target. So check the current value in Google Ads before you revert an old change.

A revert also doubles the cooldown for that item. Then the automation does not act again soon on a change that you reverted. See Automation history.

How automations that start from an alert use that alert​

Block wasting search terms and Lift the budget on profitable campaigns being capped each start from an alert. Each one uses the thresholds of that alert from your alert preferences. If you change a threshold there, the automation uses the changed threshold.

When an automation acts on an alert, the side drawer of that alert shows Hero Marketer acted on this with a Revert button. You can revert the change from the alert, without the history page.

If you turn off the alert type, the automation that starts from it cannot act. The card of the automation then shows a warning with an Open alert settings link. The three automations with a built in rule do not depend on a built in alert type.

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