Automation scripts are not a “nice to have” in paid media anymore. As accounts scale, product catalogs expand, and platforms push more black-box automation, the real risk shifts from under-optimisation to losing control. The difference between efficient growth and silent budget leakage increasingly comes down to what teams monitor automatically, what they catch early, and where they still apply human judgment.

To bring this to life, we asked Ioannis Koukoulis, our Senior Director - Innovation Hub, to share his personal top five automation scripts across Google Ads and Meta Ads. Working at the intersection of paid media, data engineering, and product innovation, Ioannis focuses on building practical solutions that remove operational friction, protect performance, and scale decision-making without sacrificing accountability. Each script below solves a specific, recurring problem that performance teams face daily and explains why automation, when designed properly, makes marketers more effective rather than redundant.

Number 5: Monitor Learning Ad Sets Script for Meta Ads Performance Stability

Ioannis: The Monitor Learning Adsets script is essential for maintaining campaign stability and maximizing Meta Ads performance. The script functions through the Meta Graph API. This automation monitors all ad sets across the account, checking if they have exceeded a customized threshold (e.g., 7 days) while remaining in the learning phase. The script is invaluable for the ad operations teams because it solves the core problem of inefficient ad spend by instantly alerting the team via Teams/Slack and  e-mail alerts when an ad set is “stuck”, preventing prolonged spending on campaigns that aren't accumulating enough data to optimize effectively. By flagging these stalled ad sets, we can quickly identify underlying issues like a low budget, frequent edits, or insufficient conversion volume, allowing us to intervene and restore the learning process efficiently.

Number 4: Top SKU Monitoring Script for Google Ads and Google Merchant Center

Ioannis: The Top SKUs Monitoring Script is script that we built as an essential daily inventory auditor, directly linking Google Ads performance data with Google Merchant Center (GMC) status checks. This script focuses specifically on two vital product segments: the high-click SKUs (based on a user-defined threshold) and any manually designated priority SKUs. By enabling the Shopping Content API, it runs checks to instantly detect critical issues like product disapprovals or, crucially, products going out of stock. I love this script because it solves the problem of sudden visibility loss; when running volatile product catalogs, this script is often the first to explain unexpected dips in PLA & PMax traffic, providing a detailed spreadsheet output of the product ID, disapproval reason, and a direct link to the solution for immediate action.

Number 3: Automated Product Labeling Script for Google Shopping and Merchant Center

Ioannis: The Product Labeling Script is my go-to solution for mastering the complexity of Google Shopping inventory management. It automates the categorization of products into distinct performance buckets, such as "Prio," "Mid," and "Zombie".  It is based on specific ROAS and spend criteria defined in a configuration sheet. So, instead of relying on static product groups, the script outputs a dynamic list of product IDs and labels to a Google Sheet, which feeds directly into Google Merchant Center as a supplemental feed. I am particularly fond of this automation because it solves the problem of stagnant segmentation. As product performance fluctuates, the labels update automatically, ensuring we are always pushing the right products with the right budgets without manual sorting. I would recommend running a script solution like this maybe once a month, so that we give the chance the products to perform under the performance bucket they are placed in.

By flagging these stalled ad sets, we can quickly identify underlying issues like a low budget, frequent edits, or insufficient conversion volume, allowing us to intervene and restore the learning process efficiently. - Ioannis Koukoulis, Senior Director - Innovation Hub, Crealytics

Number 2: Account Anomaly Detection Script for Google Ads at MCC Level

Ioannis: The Account Anomaly Detector acts as our 24/7 safety net in our accounts, by automatically comparing today’s real-time performance against historical averages to instantly flag drastic drops in impressions, clicks, or conversions. We have built a customized version of the popular Google’s standard single-account solution script because it is built for MCC-level scalability, allowing us to monitor multiple clients simultaneously with a "minimum hour" setting that prevents annoying false alarms during early mornings when data is sparse. Furthermore, our enhanced version includes profitability metrics like ROAS and Avg. CPC (rather than just volume metrics) and allows for custom percentage thresholds per KPI, giving us granular control over sensitivity. This script solves the critical problem of undetected technical failures, ensuring that if for example, a tracking code breaks or a site goes down, or something unexpected happens in the managed accounts, our campaign operations team receives an email alert immediately rather than discovering the disaster the next day.

The Winner - Number 1: Hourly Budget Pacing and Spend Monitoring Script for Google Ads

Ioannis: The Hourly Budget Usage Check Script is my favorite budget management tool because it eliminates the uncertainty and stress of daily budget pacing across multiple accounts. This MCC-level script runs every hour, collecting real-time data on daily budgets and current spending for all active campaigns with daily budgets. It then neatly outputs this data into a dedicated Google Sheet tab for each client account, applying conditional formatting to instantly highlight campaigns that have spent over a pre-defined spend threshold of their daily budget in red. It also sends a notification e-mail when spend & exceeds the threshold. This constant, proactive monitoring solves the crucial problem of budget over/under-spending, ensuring that advertising funds are spent efficiently throughout the day, maximizing performance without unexpected overruns or missed opportunities.

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About Crealytics

Crealytics is an award-winning full-funnel digital marketing agency fueling the profitable growth of over 100 well-known B2C and B2B businesses, including ASOS, The Hut Group, Staples and Urban Outfitters. A global company with an inclusive team of 100+ international employees, we operate from our hubs in Berlin, New York, Chicago, London, and Mumbai.