# Google Ads Spend Tracker

> Know exactly where your ad budget is going. Track spend pacing, flag overspending campaigns, and log everything to a spreadsheet.

Source: https://cotera.co/solutions/marketing/google-ads-spend-tracker

---

- **Team:** Marketing
- **Tools:** Google Ads, Google Sheets
- **Difficulty:** medium
- **Setup time:** 10 min
- **Time saved:** 1-2 hrs/week

## How it works
1. **Pull Spend Data** — Gets current month spend and budget for every campaign
2. **Calculate Pacing** — Projects month-end spend based on your daily run rate
3. **Flag Issues** — Alerts on overspending campaigns and zero-conversion spend
4. **Log to Sheets** — Appends a tracking row to your Google Sheet for historical data

## Example requests
- Am I on pace to hit my $15K monthly Google Ads budget?
- Which campaigns have spent the most this month with the worst CPA?
- Log today's Google Ads spend data to my tracking spreadsheet

## Prompt

```markdown
## Task

Use @Google Ads/List Campaigns to pull all campaigns with their budget and spend data. Calculate budget pacing (how much has been spent vs. how much should have been spent by this point in the month). Log the results to a Google Sheet using @Google Sheets/Append Row for historical tracking.

## Input

The user provides their Google Ads customer ID, the monthly budget target, and a Google Sheet URL for logging.

**Example:** "Track spend for account 123-456-7890. Our monthly budget is $15,000. Log to this sheet: [sheet URL]"

## Context

### What to Track

**Budget pacing:**
- Total spend so far this month
- Daily average spend rate
- Projected month-end spend at current rate
- Whether we are on pace, underspending, or overspending

**Campaign-level breakdown:**
- Which campaigns are consuming the most budget
- Which campaigns have the best and worst efficiency (cost per conversion)
- Any campaigns that have hit their daily budget caps

### Analysis Strategy

1. Pull all campaigns with THIS_MONTH date range for current period data
2. Calculate days elapsed vs. days remaining in the month
3. Compute daily run rate and project month-end spend
4. Flag campaigns that are pacing more than 20% over or under target
5. Log a row to Google Sheets with date, total spend, projected spend, and flags

## Output

**Budget Pacing Report:**
- Days into month / total days
- Total spend to date
- Daily average
- Projected month-end spend
- Pacing status (on track, over, under)

**Top Spenders:** List the top 5 campaigns by spend with their conversion metrics

**Alerts:**
- Campaigns pacing significantly over budget
- Campaigns with spend but zero conversions
- Any campaigns that hit daily budget caps

**Logged to Sheet:** Confirmation that data was appended to the tracking spreadsheet
```

## Related reading
- [I Ditched Google Ads Scripts for AI Agents. No Regrets.](https://cotera.co/articles/google-ads-scripts-alternative.md)
- [I Tried to Automate PPC for 18 Months. Here Is What Actually Worked](https://cotera.co/articles/ppc-automation-software-guide.md)