Run Google Ads campaigns

Get found on Google covers the free (organic) side of Google Shopping. This page covers the paid side: creating and running actual Google Ads campaigns from Brainerce.

Where to find it

Open Apps → Google, pick your sales channel, and open the Google Ads tab. Shopping and Performance Max campaigns need Merchant Center connected first (under the Merchant Center tab of the same app): both are driven by the same product feed that powers your free listings. Search campaigns do not: a Search campaign runs on keywords and ad text you write, with no product feed involved, so you can create one even if Merchant Center isn't connected at all.

Connecting an Ads account

The Google Ads tab needs a Google Ads customer account linked before you can create anything. You have two options:

• You already manage a Google Ads account. If your connected Google account already has access to one, Brainerce picks it up automatically and the tab shows its Ads Customer ID.
• You don't have one. Click Create Google Ads account. Brainerce provisions a client account under its own Google Ads manager account: one click, no separate Google Ads signup.

A freshly created account cannot spend money yet, and this is not a Brainerce limitation. Google's Ads API has no way to collect a payment method; that can only be done by signing into the Google Ads website directly. So the moment Brainerce creates your account, it also emails an invite to the Google account you connected. Until that invite is accepted and a payment method is added inside Google Ads, campaigns and reports for that account won't load, and you'll see a banner explaining exactly that (rather than a raw Google error). This step can take anywhere from a few minutes to a day, and it's the single most common reason a brand-new account looks "stuck." If the invite itself failed to send, the banner says so: try disconnecting and reconnecting the channel, or contact support.

If your Ads tab instead shows "Being enabled," Google Ads access for Brainerce is still being approved on Google's side; nothing you do locally changes that, and the tab activates automatically once approved.

Creating a campaign

Click New campaign to open the campaign wizard. Three campaign types:

1. Basics

• Campaign name, daily budget (an average, not a hard daily cap: Google can spend somewhat more on a given day and less on another to hit the monthly average).
• Bidding strategy: Maximize conversion value (optionally with a target ROAS, e.g. 3.5 for a 350% return target), Maximize conversions (optionally with a target CPA), Manual CPC (Shopping only, with an optional max CPC), or Maximize clicks (Search only: the option offered when your account has no conversion history yet to bid toward value with).
• Start date and end date, both optional. Leave them empty and the campaign starts the moment you turn it on and keeps running until somebody pauses it. Fill in an end date and Google stops the campaign for you on that day, which is the only thing that will ever stop it spending by itself. Setting a start date does not turn the campaign on: every campaign is created paused, so you still have to switch it on yourself. See "When the campaign runs" below.
• Locations, optional. Leave it empty and the campaign runs worldwide, which is what Google does unless you say otherwise. Add one or more countries or regions and Google only shows the ads to people there. See "Where the ads are shown" below.
• Performance Max and Search campaigns also take a landing page URL (defaults to your store's website if left blank).

2. Assets (Performance Max) or Keywords (Search)

Performance Max needs a minimum set of creative assets before it can run. Shopping campaigns skip this step entirely since they're driven by your existing product feed:

• Headlines: at least 3, up to 30 characters each
• Long headlines: at least 1, up to 90 characters each
• Descriptions: at least 2, up to 90 characters each
• Business name: up to 25 characters
• Images: at least one marketing image (landscape, 1200×628 recommended), one square image (1200×1200), and one logo (square)

Write it yourself, or click "Fill with AI." The AI Autofill button generates headlines, long headlines, descriptions and a business name grounded in your actual store name and top products; it doesn't invent claims your store doesn't make. Every generated field stays freely editable afterward, and you can regenerate as many times as you like. Each generation costs 2 AI credits from your plan's monthly allowance; see AI credits for what that means for your balance. Images are picked from your existing media library. There's no AI image generation in this wizard.

Search campaigns get a different step here, with no AI autofill and no images:

• Ad group name, optional: an internal label only, shoppers never see it.
• Keywords: what a shopper has to search for before your ad is even eligible to show. At least one is required. Each keyword has a match type (Broad, Phrase, or Exact) that controls how closely a search has to match the keyword's exact wording before it counts.
• Negative keywords, optional: searches your ad should never show for, so you stop paying for clearly irrelevant clicks. Same match-type choice as regular keywords. These apply to this one ad group only. Brainerce does not offer an account-wide shared negative-keyword list; if you want the same exclusions across several campaigns, add them to each one, or set up a shared list directly in Google Ads.
• Headlines: at least 3, up to 15, 30 characters each. Descriptions: at least 2, up to 4, 90 characters each. Google mixes and matches your headlines and descriptions automatically to assemble the actual ad shown. This is what Google calls a Responsive Search Ad, and it's the only ad format Brainerce creates for Search campaigns today.
• Display path (two optional 15-character segments), appended to the end of your landing page's domain in the ad text itself. Purely cosmetic: it does not have to match the real URL, and the second segment only appears if you filled in the first.

3. Review

Before committing, you get two choices:

• Validate: runs a safe server-side dry run against Google Ads. Nothing is written to your account; this only checks that Google would accept the campaign as configured.
• Create: actually creates the campaign in your Google Ads account. Every campaign is created paused. Nothing spends until you explicitly turn it on from the campaign list. This is deliberate: it gives you a chance to double-check budget and assets in Google Ads itself before any money moves.

This applies even when you set a start date. A start date is not an on switch. If you leave the campaign paused it will never start, whatever date you typed. Turn it on from the campaign list once you are happy with it, and Google holds it until the start date before it shows anything. Turning it on early costs nothing.

When the campaign runs: start and end dates

Both dates are optional and both are set in the Basics step of the wizard. With both left empty, the campaign starts as soon as you turn it on and runs indefinitely. Google holds the dates and enforces them itself; there is no timer on the Brainerce side.

Stop a campaign automatically with an end date

An end date is a spending limit measured in time, and that is the main reason to use one. A holiday sale you set up and then forget about does not quietly keep charging your card every day into February: on the end date Google stops the campaign, and the spending stops with it. The end date itself is included, so ads can still run on that day.

If you leave the end date empty, nothing will stop the campaign for you. Not the dashboard, not a reminder, not anything else in Brainerce. It runs and bills your Google Ads payment method until a person pauses or removes it. An end date, a pause, or removing the campaign: those are the only things that ever stop it.

A good habit: whenever a campaign is for a sale, a season or a launch that has a last day, put that last day in the end date field while you are creating it. Changing your mind later is easy (you can pause it early, or extend it in Google Ads), but a campaign with no end date and nobody watching it is how money leaks.

A start date does not turn the campaign on

This is the part that trips people up. Every campaign is created paused, and a paused campaign shows no ads at all, whatever its start date says. A start date tells Google when it is allowed to begin; the campaign's status decides whether it begins at all.

So getting a campaign to launch on a future date takes two steps, not one:

1. Set the start date in the wizard when you create the campaign.
2. Turn the campaign on from the campaign list.

Do both and Google waits until the start date and begins serving that day, not before. Do only the first and nothing happens on the start date or ever after it. Switching a campaign on ahead of its start date is safe and is exactly what you are meant to do: it cannot spend anything before the start date arrives.

Dates are whole days in your Google Ads time zone

The dates cover whole days, from the beginning of the start date to the end of the end date. Those days are counted in the time zone set on your Google Ads account, and that is not necessarily the time zone you live in. If the two differ, a campaign can start or stop a few hours earlier or later than you expected. When the exact hour matters to you (a sale that opens at midnight, for example), check which time zone your Google Ads account uses before you rely on the date.

There is no hour of day scheduling

Brainerce cannot run your ads only in the evenings, only at weekends, or only during your opening hours. Start and end dates cover whole days and a whole day is the smallest unit available here. If you need to control which hours of the day your ads run, set that up on the campaign inside Google Ads, where it is called an ad schedule.

Changing the start or end date after the campaign is created

You cannot change these dates from Brainerce. The dashboard can pause, resume, edit the daily budget and remove a campaign, but the start and end dates are set once, in the wizard. To move them afterwards, open the campaign in Google Ads and edit them there.

If all you want is for the campaign to stop, you do not need Google Ads at all: Pause in the campaign list stops it immediately. And if the campaign has not started yet, removing it and creating a new one with the right dates is often quicker than editing it in Google Ads.

Where the ads are shown: countries and regions

The Locations field in step 1 decides which countries your ads can appear in. It is the third limit on what a campaign costs you: the daily budget caps the money per day, the end date caps the number of days, and locations cap who the money is spent on.

A campaign with no location runs worldwide

If you leave Locations empty, Google may show your ads in any country and charge you for every click, including clicks from people you cannot ship to. This is Google's own default behaviour and it is not something Brainerce adds.

Every campaign created in Brainerce before this field existed has no locations set, so all of them are running worldwide. Brainerce cannot change that for you: open those campaigns in Google Ads and set their locations there.

The review screen warns you when no location is set, but it does not stop you. Worldwide is a legitimate choice if you genuinely ship everywhere.

Choosing countries or regions

Type into the Locations box and pick from the list. You can add as many as you need, up to 100 in one campaign, and mix levels freely: a whole country, or just a district or state inside one.

Searching a country name also brings up that country's regions, so typing Israel offers Israel itself along with its districts, and typing Tel Aviv goes straight to the district.

Only countries and their top level administrative divisions are offered here, which for Israel means the districts and for the United States means the states. Targeting a single city, a postcode or a radius around a shop is set on the campaign inside Google Ads.

People in a location, or people interested in it

Once you have picked at least one location, a second control appears with two options:

• People in these locations. Only people Google places inside the places you chose. This is the default and the right choice when you ship to those places and nowhere else.
• People in or interested in these locations. Also reaches people elsewhere who searched about those places. Wider reach, and you pay for clicks from people who may not be able to order from you.

Brainerce always sends this setting explicitly rather than letting Google pick, so a campaign that says it targets one country really does charge you only for that country unless you chose otherwise.

Region names are in English

Google publishes its list of targetable places in English only, so region names appear in English even when your dashboard is in Hebrew. A district shows as "Tel Aviv District", not in Hebrew. Country names follow your dashboard language; region names cannot, because there is nothing to translate them from.

Changing locations after the campaign is created

You cannot change locations from Brainerce. Like the start and end dates, they are set once in the wizard. To change them afterwards, or to add exclusions, open the campaign in Google Ads and edit its locations there.

Managing existing campaigns

The Google Ads tab lists every campaign on the linked account, each showing impressions, clicks, cost, and conversions over a 7/30/90-day window you choose. Per campaign you can:

• Pause / Resume: toggle whether it's actively spending. Available on any campaign that hasn't been removed.
• Edit daily budget: change the average daily spend without recreating the campaign.
• View report: a per-campaign daily breakdown of the same four metrics over your selected date range.
• Remove: permanently deletes the campaign from Google Ads. This can't be undone, and a removed campaign can no longer be paused, resumed, or have its budget edited.

Turning a Search campaign on shows an extra review screen first. Clicking Resume on a paused Search campaign re-reads the campaign's current budget from Google and shows you a summary (campaign name and daily budget) before anything actually goes live. You confirm with Activate now, or cancel and nothing changes. This review is only valid for about 15 minutes; if you close it and come back later, clicking Resume opens a fresh one. Pausing, removing, and editing the budget of an already-paused Search campaign don't need this extra step. Only the moment a Search campaign starts spending does. Performance Max and Shopping campaigns don't show this screen; Resume works on them exactly as it always has. Once a Search campaign has been turned on for the first time, raising its daily budget (not lowering it) goes through the same review.

The daily budget is the only thing you can edit here. A campaign's start and end dates are set once, in the wizard, and cannot be changed from Brainerce afterwards. To move a date on a campaign that already exists, open it in Google Ads. To stop a campaign now rather than on a date, use Pause.

Search terms, product and asset performance

Beyond the per-campaign daily report, click Reports at the top of the Google Ads tab for three more views, each read directly from your Google Ads account:

• Search terms: the actual words shoppers typed before your ad showed. Available for Search and Performance Max campaigns. Not available for Shopping campaigns: Google does not expose literal search queries for Shopping ads, and Brainerce cannot add data Google itself does not provide. If every campaign on your account is Shopping, this tab tells you so rather than showing an empty table.
• Products: impressions, clicks, cost and conversions per product, for both Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.
• Assets: performance per individual headline, description or image inside a Performance Max campaign, including Google's own performance label (Low/Good/Best) where Google has scored it yet. Not available for Shopping campaigns, which have no assets in this sense.

Search terms here are not the same thing as organic (free) search data. This tab shows what people searched right before clicking a paid Google Ads result. It has nothing to do with Get found on Google's free listings or with Google Search Console, and the two should never be added together or compared as if they were one number.

As of this writing, these three reports are rolling out and may not be active for every account yet. If a tab shows "not yet connected" rather than data, nothing else about your campaigns is affected: Shopping, Performance Max, budgets and bidding all keep working normally either way.

Cost and revenue figures here are always in your Google Ads account's own currency, shown as reported by Google. They are never added to, or shown converted into, your store's own revenue numbers elsewhere in Brainerce. See "Your own numbers stay correct either way" above for why a Google-reported figure and a Brainerce-reported figure can legitimately differ.

AI recommendations (BOBO)

Ask BOBO (the AI assistant) something like "how are my Google Ads doing" or "any recommendations for my Ads account" and it checks your account for five specific problems, using the same report data described above plus your own store's stock and measurement status:

• Search terms with spend and no purchases. Words shoppers actually typed that cost you money and never converted.
• Low-ROAS products. A product spending enough to judge, returning less than it costs.
• A campaign still advertising an out-of-stock product. Ad spend going toward something a shopper can't actually buy right now.
• A measurement problem. Purchases that failed to report back to Google Analytics, so your reported numbers are undercounting.
• Landing-page drop-off. Needs read access to Google Analytics: grant it from the Analytics tab on your Google channel, then give it a few days to collect data. Until then this comes back as "not enough data," not because your store has no drop-off to report on.

Every recommendation BOBO gives you states the exact period it covers, the numbers behind it, a confidence level, and its own limitations. For example, a low-ROAS flag based on only a handful of clicks says so, because a small sample can swing wildly. BOBO explains what it found and suggests a change; it never claims a correlation proves the cause, and it never promises you'll save a specific amount of money.

BOBO cannot fix any of this for you. It only reads and explains: it cannot pause a campaign, change a budget, add a negative keyword, edit an ad, or exclude a product from a campaign, even when it just told you about the problem. To pause a campaign or change its budget, use the campaign list above. Negative keywords and headlines/descriptions can only be set when you first create a Search campaign in the wizard. Brainerce has no screen for editing keywords or ad text on a campaign that already exists, for any campaign type, so adding a negative keyword to an existing campaign, editing an ad, or excluding a product from a campaign all still need to be done directly in Google Ads.

A recommendation reflects your Ads account and store as they were the last time it was checked, not necessarily right now, and it does not clear itself. BOBO re-checks daily and refreshes a recommendation's numbers each time it does, but if the underlying problem stops happening on its own (you fixed it in Google Ads, the product is back in stock), the recommendation still stays listed. There is currently no way to dismiss one from chat, so treat it as a snapshot from the last check rather than a live status.

Conversion tracking checks

Before you turn a campaign on, the review step checks whether a sale on your store can actually be measured, and warns you if not. These checks are read only. Nothing is changed on your Google Ads account by looking at them, and none of them stop you from creating a campaign.

These same checks, and more, are also on the Readiness tab under Apps → Google, so you don't have to open the campaign wizard just to see whether conversion tracking is set up. The Readiness tab also explains what "Unknown" and "Permission needed" mean there, which is not the same as passing.

No conversion tracking at all

If Google Ads has never recorded a single conversion action on this account, the review step tells you the campaign's clicks will not be measured, with a checkbox you tick to confirm you understand and continue anyway. Setting this up takes two steps in two different Google products, in this order:

1. In Google Analytics, link this Google Ads account under Admin, Product links, Google Ads links.
2. In Google Ads, import the purchase event under Tools, Measurement, Conversions, Import, Google Analytics 4.

Conversion imports are not retroactive. Every click you pay for before this is done stays unmeasured for good, so it is worth fixing before you turn a campaign on rather than after.

Auto tagging is off

Auto tagging is a setting on your whole Google Ads account, not on one campaign. When it is off, a visitor's click never carries a gclid to your store, so a sale cannot be tied back to the ad that caused it, even on a campaign that is otherwise set up correctly. Turn it on in Google Ads under Account settings, Auto tagging. It applies to clicks from that point on, not to ones that already happened.

No purchase action is the primary goal

Google Ads needs one conversion action marked as its main purchase goal so Smart Bidding has something to optimize toward. If none of your enabled conversion actions are marked that way, the review step flags it. Open the conversion action in Google Ads and set it as primary for the account's goals.

More than one purchase action is enabled

If two conversion actions are both categorized as a purchase and both enabled (for example one from a GA4 import and a second one added directly in Google Ads), the same order can be counted twice. Keep exactly one as primary and pause or remove the other, rather than leaving both live.

GA4 import not found yet

This checks specifically for a conversion action that was imported from Google Analytics 4, separately from the general "no conversion tracking at all" check above. If you have already linked GA4 to this Ads account, this can just mean the import has not finished syncing yet; give it a little time and check again before assuming something is wrong.

Enhanced Conversions: sending sales directly to Google Ads

Beyond the GA4-import path above, Brainerce can also report a completed sale to Google Ads directly: Google calls this "Enhanced Conversions." When it's active, a paid order on your store is matched back to the ad click that brought the shopper in (using the Google click id captured at that visit), and if the shopper consented, the sale's hashed email and phone are attached too, which helps Google match the sale to the ad even when the click id alone is not enough.

This is a server-side, automatic process, and there is nothing to click. It happens on its own for every paid order once your account is eligible, the same way the GA4 purchase event already does. There is no button in the wizard to trigger it and no per-order control.

As of this writing, direct upload is a newer capability still rolling out and is not active for every store yet. If it has not reached your account, nothing changes about how your campaigns already work: Shopping, Performance Max, and the GA4-import path above are unaffected either way. Once it is active for your account, the conditions below still have to be met on a given order before anything is sent.

Why it might not send for a particular order

Even once the capability is active for your account, an individual order can still go unreported, and this is expected rather than a fault:

• No ad click on the order. A shopper who never clicked a Google ad (direct visits, organic search, another channel) has no click id to report against, so there is nothing to upload.
• You already have a GA4-imported purchase action as your primary goal. Brainerce will not create a second, competing purchase action or upload alongside one, since doing so would report the same sale to Google Ads twice and throw off your reported conversion numbers. Only one path reports purchases to your account's bidding at a time. See "More than one purchase action is enabled" above for the check that catches this.
• The shopper declined ad-related cookies/consent. If your store has its own cookie-consent banner and the shopper declined the advertising category specifically (not just analytics), Brainerce does not send anything for that order, not even the click id, since it is treated as advertising data under that decline. A decline on analytics consent alone does not affect this; the two are tracked separately.

Refunds and cancellations

When an order that was reported this way is later refunded or cancelled, Brainerce tries to tell Google Ads about it too, so a refunded sale does not keep counting toward your reported conversions and bidding forever. This only happens if the original sale was successfully reported in the first place, and only within the time window Google allows for correcting a conversion after the fact (roughly two months from the original sale, not from the refund date). A refund outside that window, or on an order that was never reported to Ads to begin with, is not reflected on the Google Ads side at all, and Brainerce does not attempt to force it through some other way.

Your own numbers stay correct either way. Refunds and your order/revenue reports in Brainerce are always based on what was actually paid and refunded through your store, never on whether Google Ads managed to record the correction. Do not compare a revenue figure from Google Ads against Brainerce's own numbers as if they were measuring the same thing: Google Ads reports what it was told and when it was told it, while Brainerce reports what actually happened in your store.

Campaign is active but not showing

A campaign can say Active and still reach nobody. "Active" means you turned it on. Whether anyone actually sees it is Google's decision, made separately, and Google can refuse while the campaign still looks switched on.

When that happens the campaign list marks it Not serving and prints Google's own reason underneath it. Two reasons come up most often:

• No product groups. The campaign has no products attached, so there is nothing for Google to show. Shopping campaigns created before September 2026 could be saved this way; ones created since always include an "all products" group. Fix an affected campaign by adding a product group in Google Ads, or by recreating it from the wizard.
• The ad or asset group underneath is paused. Campaigns created before September 2026 could keep a paused ad even after you turned the campaign on. Resuming the campaign does not switch it back on for you. Brainerce only ever changes the campaign's own status; it never touches the status of an ad or asset group underneath it, so a paused ad or asset group stays exactly as you (or, for an older campaign, this gap) left it. Open the campaign in Google Ads and enable the paused ad or asset group there directly, and the flag clears once it is serving.

A campaign showing Not serving spends nothing, which is the one piece of good news here: you are not paying for an invisible campaign. But you are also not selling, so it is worth clearing rather than leaving.

Check the dates before you go hunting for anything more complicated. A campaign whose start date has not arrived yet shows nothing and spends nothing until that day, and a campaign whose end date has already passed has stopped for the same reason. Neither is a fault: it is the date doing what you asked it to do. If you are not sure what you set, open the campaign in Google Ads and look at its start and end dates there, because they cannot be changed from Brainerce.

This is separate from the conversion tracking warning. A campaign can serve perfectly and still record no conversions, and a campaign can be fully tracked and still not serve. They are two different problems with two different fixes.

What Brainerce does not do here

• Brainerce does not bill you for ad spend. Every dollar/shekel a campaign spends is billed by Google directly to the payment method on your Google Ads account, exactly as if you'd built the campaign in Google Ads itself. Brainerce only charges AI credits for the copy generator.
• Brainerce does not guarantee performance. Creating and funding a campaign makes it eligible to serve; how much it sells depends on your budget, bidding strategy, competition and product data, same as it would if you'd built the campaign directly in Google Ads.
• Brainerce does not manage bidding for you day to day. The bidding strategy you choose at creation runs automatically inside Google Ads; there's no ongoing optimization service on top of it.
• Brainerce does not stop your campaigns on its own. The end date you set in the wizard is enforced by Google, not by us: there is no Brainerce timer watching your campaigns. If you leave the end date empty, nothing here will ever stop a campaign on its own, however long it runs and however much it spends. It stops when it reaches an end date you set, or when somebody pauses or removes it.
• Brainerce does not change a campaign's dates after it is created. The dashboard edits the daily budget and nothing else about the schedule. Start and end dates are set once in the wizard; from then on they are changed in Google Ads.
• Brainerce does not change a campaign's locations after it is created. Locations are set once in the wizard, the same as the dates. Changing where a running campaign serves is done in Google Ads.
• Brainerce does not exclude locations. You can say where a campaign should serve, but not where it must not. Negative location targeting, such as running nationwide except one city, is set on the campaign inside Google Ads.
• Brainerce does not target by city, postcode or radius. The picker offers countries and their top level regions only, such as districts in Israel or states in the United States. Anything finer is set in Google Ads.
• Brainerce does not limit who sees an ad beyond where they are. There is no way here to target an age, a gender or an interest group. In Performance Max, Google treats audiences as a hint rather than a rule and may serve outside them anyway, so location is the only targeting that genuinely restricts who your ads reach.
• Brainerce does not set locations for you from your store address or shipping zones. An empty Locations field means worldwide, and nothing is filled in on your behalf, because guessing a country wrong would spend the whole budget in the wrong one.
• Brainerce does not schedule ads by hour or by day of the week. There is no way here to say "evenings only" or "weekends only". Start and end dates cover whole days, and a whole day is the finest control Brainerce offers. Hour of day scheduling is set on the campaign inside Google Ads.
• Brainerce does not let you edit a Search campaign's keywords or ad text after it is created. Keywords, negative keywords, and the responsive search ad's headlines/descriptions are all set once, in the wizard, the same as dates and locations. Adding a keyword, removing one, or changing the ad text on an existing Search campaign is done directly in Google Ads.
• Brainerce does not offer account-wide or campaign-wide shared negative keyword lists. Negative keywords you add in the wizard apply to that one campaign's ad group only. A shared list used across several campaigns is set up in Google Ads.
• Brainerce does not write per-keyword bids. Every keyword in a Search campaign bids at the ad group's own bid (for Manual CPC) or lets the automated strategy you chose decide. Setting a different bid for one specific keyword is done in Google Ads.
• BOBO's AI recommendations don't fix anything. BOBO can tell you about a wasted-spend search term, a low-ROAS product, an out-of-stock product still getting clicks, or a measurement problem, and suggest what to do about it, but it cannot pause a campaign, change a budget, add a negative keyword, edit an ad, or exclude a product, even for the exact issue it just found. See "AI recommendations (BOBO)" above.

What's next?

• Get found on Google: the free listings this paid layer sits on top of.
• AI credits: what the AI copy generator costs and how your monthly allowance works.