Choose what to target
Choose what to target is the first step of the campaign wizard. One sentence holds your choices, each part on its own line: Show my ad for a product when people in a country search for a search term and send them to a landing page. Under the sentence, you pick the campaign type (Search, Performance Max, or Demand Gen), who sees your ad (on Search and Demand Gen: everyone, or Only people on my lists for a retargeting campaign), and the search type (Category search, Brand search, or Competitor search, on Search only). Then you click Find keywords, or Write my ad for Demand Gen retargeting, which has no search term.
Choose keywords and budget
On the second step of the campaign wizard, Hero Marketer groups Google Keyword Planner ideas for your search term into 1 to 3 keyword clusters of up to 10 keywords. On Search, the step is Choose keywords and budget, and the wizard shows the clusters as keyword group cards with the keyword count and monthly searches. The first one has a Suggested tag and is selected. The keyword table shows searches, clicks, cost per click, and cost per month, in three lists: Running, Over budget, and Archive. To archive a keyword that does not fit, click its archive button. The keyword leaves the cluster and moves to the Archive, one list for all of the clusters. The message has Undo. To move a keyword to a different cluster, archive it, select the other cluster, and click Add to group on the keyword in the Archive. On a Search campaign below the recommended budget, the keywords that the budget cannot cover move to the Over budget list. On Performance Max (Choose themes and budget) and Demand Gen (Choose your audience and budget), the keywords show as chips with no table and no prices: remove one with its X, or type your own of up to 80 characters and 10 words, up to 25 in all. Check the monthly budget at the top, then click Write ad copy. After you go back to the first step, this step stays open with your clusters, budget, and Archive, until you change the product, country, search type, or search term.
Set your monthly budget
You set a monthly budget on the second step of the campaign wizard. On Search, it starts at the recommended budget of the keyword cluster that you pick. Performance Max starts at Google's own recommendation, or at 50 conversions at your account's cost per conversion. Demand Gen starts at a test budget of about 100 US dollars a day. Search retargeting and Demand Gen retargeting have no recommended budget, so you type the monthly budget. A change of campaign type resets the budget. Change it with the minus and plus buttons, 50 at a time, or type any amount of 31 or more. Only Search shows expected clicks. Below the recommended budget, a Search campaign runs only the keywords that the budget can show your ad for on 80% of their searches. The other keywords move to the Over budget list until you raise the budget, or click Cover all. A Performance Max campaign keeps all of its keywords as search themes at any budget. Google Ads gets the budget as a daily budget: the monthly budget divided by 30.4, rounded down to the cent (or to a whole unit in currencies that Google Ads takes without cents, such as yen and won), so Google does not charge more than your monthly budget in a month. The Launch button shows the monthly budget. After you publish, change the daily budget through Hero AI or in Google Ads.
Check your ad
Check your ad is the third step of the campaign wizard. It shows the ad as Google shows it, with Show another version. The Headlines tab holds 15 headlines in three groups of 5, the Descriptions tab holds 4 descriptions, and the Extras tab holds sitelinks and other extensions. Launch needs 4 sitelinks. Edit any line in place. The ad copy needs no approval. Clicking Launch is the one deliberate step. Each tab shows a status icon: a green check, an empty circle, or an amber alert icon. The campaign card next to the ad shows the monthly budget, the expected clicks, the keywords, bidding, and the campaign name. A Search retargeting campaign adds a Your lists row that opens the Extras tab, where you pick its lists. To change a setting, click its row on the card. The launch bar at the bottom of the step lists what stops the launch. Then click Launch, for example Launch at $500 a month.
Create a Performance Max campaign
On the Choose what to target step, set Campaign type to Performance Max. On the Choose themes and budget step, select a card under Choose a theme. Every keyword of the cluster becomes a search theme at any budget, up to 25, shown as chips with no keyword table and no prices. Click the X on a chip to remove a search theme, or type your own of up to 80 characters and 10 words in Add a search theme. The budget starts at Google's own recommendation for a new Performance Max campaign, or at 50 conversions at your account's cost per conversion, and shows no expected clicks. On the Extras tab of the Check your ad step, click Choose lists and pick your website visitor lists or customer lists for the audience signal. When your account has a list that can run, launch waits for at least one. Hero Marketer also adds the people who search for your search themes. The signal is a hint for Google, not targeting. Hero Marketer writes your ad with 5 long headlines. On the Check your ad step, the ad copy needs no approval. The Preview card shows the ad on Search, YouTube, Discover, or Gmail, and Show another version shows the next headline, description, and selected image. The Images tab holds your images, from Create images or uploaded. The Extras tab holds your logo and business name. In the EU, India, and New York, Google can show its AI label on the ad itself. Launch needs at least 5 landscape, 5 square, and 5 portrait images, and Google takes up to 20. Every headline, long headline, and description must be different. Uploads are free PNG, JPEG, or WebP files of up to 10 MB. The automatic name is PMAX | keyword cluster | country code. Performance Max uses Category search only and has no retargeting type.
Create a Demand Gen campaign
On the Choose what to target step, set Campaign type to Demand Gen. Demand Gen shows image ads on YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Display to the people who search on Google for your keywords, and Google finds more people like them. On the Choose your audience and budget step, select a card under Choose who sees your ad. Its searches show as chips, with no keyword table and no prices: click the X on a chip to remove one, or type your own of up to 80 characters and 10 words in Add a search, up to 25. Your lists are optional and are on the Extras tab of the Check your ad step. The budget starts at a test budget of about 100 US dollars a day in your account's currency, with no expected clicks. Hero Marketer writes a Demand Gen ad of 5 headlines of up to 30 characters and 5 descriptions of up to 90, each one different. The Check your ad step shows a Preview card of the ad in YouTube, Discover, or Gmail, where Show another version shows the next headline, description, and selected image, and four tabs: Headlines, Descriptions, Images, and Extras. The Extras tab holds Your lists, your logo, and your business name. Launch needs at least 5 landscape, 5 square, and 5 portrait images, your logo, and a business name. In the EU, India, and New York, Google can show its AI label on the ad itself. Bidding is Maximize clicks or Maximize conversions. Demand Gen takes no sitelinks or other extensions. The automatic name is Demand Gen | keyword cluster | country code. Demand Gen uses Category search only.
Create a retargeting campaign
A retargeting campaign shows your ads only to people on your Google Ads lists: website visitor lists and customer lists. On the Choose what to target step, set Campaign type to Search or Demand Gen. In the Audience type menu, select Only people on my lists. Then pick at least one list on the Extras tab of the Check your ad step, in the Your lists box. Search becomes Search retargeting: text ads on Google search results, with broad match keywords. Demand Gen becomes Demand Gen retargeting: image ads on YouTube, Gmail, Discover, and Display, with no second step. A list needs 100 or more people on its network, and Google must allow it there. A campaign takes up to 20 lists. Retargeting has no recommended budget: you type the monthly budget. The wizard uses the lists that your account already has. It does not add the Google tag and does not create lists.
Add sitelinks
Sitelinks are extra links under your ad. In the campaign wizard, open the Extras tab on the Check your ad step. Click Pick from your account to reuse sitelinks from your Google Ads account, or Write with AI to enter page URLs and let AI write the text. Write with AI uses credits and creates the sitelinks in your Google Ads account at once, at account level. A Search, Search retargeting, or Performance Max campaign launches with exactly 4 sitelinks: Launch waits until you have 4. Demand Gen takes no sitelinks.
Add other extensions
Beyond sitelinks, the campaign wizard lets you attach callouts, structured snippets, and prices that already exist in your Google Ads account. On the Check your ad step, open the Extras tab and click Add next to Callouts, Structured snippets, or Prices. Search and Performance Max ad copy also comes with up to 6 callouts that Hero Marketer writes from your proof and offers. Remove the ones that you do not want. Hero Marketer does not write structured snippets or prices. It attaches the extensions to the campaign when you publish.
What the campaign wizard creates
When you click Launch on the Check your ad step, Hero Marketer publishes one campaign and turns it on. A Search campaign takes 30 to 60 seconds: one ad group with the keywords that your monthly budget covers as Exact match, one responsive search ad with pinned headlines, one country, English, and Google Search only, with Google's text customization and final URL expansion off. A Performance Max campaign takes one to two minutes: one asset group with your ad copy, 15 to 20 images (at least 5 landscape, 5 square, and 5 portrait), a search theme for each keyword of the cluster (up to 25), and one audience signal from the parts that you picked. A Demand Gen campaign takes one to two minutes: one ad group with one audience and one multi-image ad of 5 headlines, your descriptions, and 15 to 20 images. A Search retargeting campaign is a Search campaign with broad match keywords that shows ads only to the lists you picked. The daily budget is the monthly budget on the Launch button divided by 30.4, rounded down to the cent (or to a whole unit in currencies that Google Ads takes without cents, such as yen and won). Publishing uses no credits.
Drill into a campaign
What happens when you click a campaign from the dashboard or the All campaigns list. The tabs you see for Search and other campaigns, for Performance Max, and for Demand Gen, how filters carry through, and where to find image previews. Drilldown pages are read-only and free. To act on what you find, use Hero AI or an automation.
Pause or edit a live campaign
Pause or enable a campaign on the All campaigns page (click Campaigns in the sidebar). Make other changes through Hero AI in chat, where you approve each change: status of ad groups, ads, and keywords, keywords, negative keywords, daily budget, bidding strategy, Target CPA or Target ROAS, and ad copy. Automations that you turn on can make some changes for you. Change bids, location, device, schedule, networks, language, Performance Max assets, sitelinks, extensions, and structure in Google Ads.
Create ad images
Create images makes ad images for Google, Meta, and LinkedIn that look like your brand. Each image is a finished ad with a headline, one button, and your logo, in the fonts and colors of your website. Add your brand once and pick one of three looks. You can also add up to 5 reference ads. Then type what the ad promotes, pick up to 4 aspect ratios and 1 to 10 ideas, up to 20 images in a batch, and download the images. Three images use about 0.6 credits. You upload the images yourself. The exception is a Performance Max or Demand Gen campaign from the campaign wizard, which sends the images that you select to Google Ads. Every image has an invisible AI watermark and content credentials.
AI labels on ad images
Every image from Create images has Google's invisible SynthID watermark and signed content credentials (C2PA) that say AI made it. Hero Marketer keeps the file as the AI model made it, so your download keeps the content credentials. A tool that does not support content credentials removes them when you edit the image, but the watermark stays. LinkedIn shows a content credentials icon on a single-image ad. Meta can show AI info in the menu of the ad. Google shows its AI label in About this ad, and on the ad itself in the European Union, India, and New York.