Google Ads puts a business in front of people searching on Google and across its other properties. Search campaigns show text ads on results pages, Shopping campaigns show products from a linked Merchant Center account, and Video campaigns run on YouTube.
Performance Max reaches all of Google’s ad inventory from one campaign, including YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail and Maps. Demand Gen focuses on YouTube, Discover and Gmail, and AI Max for Search, in beta since May 2025, widens which searches a campaign matches and tailors the ad text.
Measuring what ads earn
Conversion tracking ties ads to sales and leads. Enhanced conversions add hashed customer details from a business’s own data, which improves matching without sending anything readable. Since April 2026, enhanced conversions for web and for leads share a single setting.
Scripts and Editor
Google Ads scripts run JavaScript inside the account from a browser-based editor, with nothing to host, and each run can last up to 30 minutes. Google Ads Editor is a free desktop app for making bulk changes offline and uploading them in one go.
The Google Ads API
The Google Ads API handles account management, custom reporting, ads built from stock and product data, and bid strategy management. Reports are written in its own query language, GAQL. Apps sign in with OAuth 2.0, and manager accounts can work across every account they manage.
Since September 2026, API access belongs to a Google Cloud project, replacing the old developer tokens. Access levels grow with need, from test accounts and Explorer access to Basic, approved automatically after brand verification and allowing 15,000 operations a day, and Standard, which has no daily cap.
Google releases new API versions frequently, with each major version available for a year. Official libraries cover Java, .NET, PHP, Python, Ruby and Perl, and test accounts let integrations be built without serving real ads.
Conversions and audiences
For new integrations, uploading offline conversions, enhanced conversions for leads and Customer Match audiences now goes through the Data Manager API, generally available since December 2025. On the Shopping side, the Merchant API has taken over from the Content API for product data.
Ad spend against real profit
Our order-level P&L shows every order’s profit both before and after marketing costs, which is the view ad spend should be judged against. Revenue per campaign is easy to report, but margin per order is what tells a business whether the clicks paid.
With API versions arriving this often and each lasting a year, a custom Google Ads connection needs someone keeping it current. For reporting that someone rebuilds by hand each week, the time saved is easy to estimate.