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. You'll need Merchant Center connected first (under the Merchant Center tab of the same app): Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are driven by the same product feed that powers your free listings.

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. Two 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), or Manual CPC (Shopping only, with an optional max CPC).
• 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 campaigns also take a landing page URL (defaults to your store's website if left blank).

2. Assets (Performance Max only)

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.

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.

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.

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. Pressing Resume on the campaign now switches those back on for you, so resume it once and the flag clears.

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.

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.