Overview

The Ads Multiplier is a Google Apps Script macro that populates Ad Words creative templates with a list of user-provided inputs. It runs on Google Spreadsheets. The script is triggered via menu option: Ads Multiplier --> Generate Output.

We've provided several ways to access/use the Ads Multiplier:

• A sample spreadsheet is provided here. The example is for an airline (Awesome Airlines) that is running two campaigns for March 2010.
• This is the easiest way to get started. Just click on "Use this template" to download a copy of the template into your Google Docs and run the script.
• Checkout the code in /trunk and edit/build yourself
• This is a more involved way to get started. Source code has been provided in the project repository, along with build instructions
• The Closure Library (specifically the dependency calculation script) is included in the checkout, but the documentation is worth reading

Reuse the template, we do recommend occasionally coming back and getting the latest template from the link here to ensure you have the latest updates to the tool.

Usage Instructions

To run the script

Select the Menu option "Ads Multiplier" ---> "Generate Output"

If you don't see "Ads Multiplier", wait a few seconds. There's a slight delay between the time you load the spreadsheet and when the menu option shows up.

You should also see an "Authorization Required" pop-up the first time you run the script. This is because the script is accessing a document that belongs to you. Click on the "OK" and run the script again. You won't need to re-authenticate the next time around.

Each time you run the script, an output tab will be generated, with the naming convention: "Outputs - <campaign name> - <today's date>".

Description of the different tabs

Input tab

The input tab contains a row for each set of input variables. The column headers are variable names, and each row should be values for a single campaign. In the screenshot below, the first row contains: citydep=Berlin, cityarr=Melbourne, country=Singapore, fare=598, and currency=SGD. The script will essentially do a find/replace for all instances of "citydep" in the templates (on the Templates tab) and replace them with Berlin. The script will do this for all rows of inputs.

Edit and add new variables (ex. citydep can be product or any other name that makes sense for you). These names just need to be reflected in your Template tab text.

Template tab

Each set of inputs from the input tab will be run through the templates on the Template tab. The column headers here will be the column headers in the final output, and each instance of !!variable will be replaced with a corresponding input from the Input tab. For the mathematically inclined, for n rows of inputs and m rows of templates, there will be nm rows of outputs.

The screenshot below shows two templates: one called "Awesome Airlines Promotion (March 2010)" and the other called "Awesome Air Promotion (March 2010 - !!citydep)". Two exclamation points (!!) denote the beginning of a variable name, so !!citydep will be replaced with values in the citydep column.

Just like with the input tab, the templates also allow for blanks if you are repeating values. For example, the last two rows of templates have the same Ad Group Name: !!citydep to !!cityarr. The script will know to fill in the blanks for the last two rows with the last value provided.

Character Limit tab

Character limits for AdWords campaigns are stored on the Character Limit tab. These are consistent with the limits here: http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6095

If the generated text in the output exceeds these limits, the script will highlight the cell in red.

For different ad formats, users can change the character limits (thus affecting which cells are highlighted in red).

Output tab

Each time the script is run, an outputs tab is generated with all of the templates, filled in with variable values.