Ninja Scripts Academy
Google Ads from top to bottom: basic, intermediate and advanced. With real examples, best practices and the gaps the scripts fill. 🔄 Syllabus reviewed and updated every month with the latest Google Ads news · 🎧 Every lesson also in audio · 🖍️ Highlight and save your favourite lessons to come back to them.
🌐 Lessons are in Spanish for now; the English version is in preparation.
Ninja Scripts Suite subscribers get 100 % of the three levels, every new lesson each month and the study tools: 🎧 audio for every lesson, ⭐ favourites and 🖍️ highlights. See the subscription →
Showing only 📐 Measurement lessons across all levels.
Basic training
13 lessons · 2 h 3 minThe 10 metrics you have to master before spending a single euro 🔑 With a free account
Impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, conversions, CPA, ROAS, impression share... what each one measures, how it is calculated and which to look at depending on what you want to know.
The landing page: where the click converts (or is lost) 🔑 With a free account
The half of the ad that lives outside Google Ads — consistency with the message, speed, mobile, a single action — plus the ten-point checklist to run before you send traffic to a page.
How Smart Bidding learns: signals, learning period and minimum data 🔑 With a free account
What the algorithm looks at in each auction, what the «Learning» status means, the 50-conversion benchmark, why changes restart the learning and how to live with it without sabotaging it.
How to set a realistic target CPA or ROAS (not the one you'd like) 🔑 With a free account
Working out the target from margin and customer value, checking it against your history, the mistake of setting the target you want instead of the one you can reach, and how to close in on the real target in 10-20% steps.
What to count as a conversion (and what not): the decision that governs the whole account 🔑 With a free account
Primary and secondary actions, the value of each conversion, counting «one» or «every», the conversion window and the mistake of counting everything that moves — tracking is the steering wheel of Smart Bidding.
The Google tag: how tracking is installed (and how to check it works) 🔑 With a free account
What the Google tag is, the three ways to install it (direct, Tag Manager, GA4), how to define the conversion event, enhanced conversions and verification with Tag Assistant.
Cookies, GDPR and Consent Mode: measuring without breaking the law (or the data) 🔑 With a free account
What consent requires in Europe, what a CMP is, how Consent Mode works (basic and advanced), conversion modelling and how to check it is properly implemented.
Attribution and lag: why today's conversions show up next week 🔑 With a free account
Attribution models (data-driven and last click), what «Conversions» means against «All conversions», conversion lag, the click date versus the event date and how to read the reports without fooling yourself.
Auditing your tracking: the routine that tells you your data is trustworthy 🔑 With a free account
The status of each conversion action, the diagnostics, comparing with the CRM, duplicates and spam, the monthly end-to-end test and the signs that tracking has broken.
The columns that matter: recommended sets by level 🔑 With a free account
How to customise and save column sets, what to look at at campaign, ad group, keyword and ad level, and the «hidden» columns that count the most — impression share, Quality Score components and conversions by date.
Segments: breaking averages apart to see what they hide 🔑 With a free account
How to segment a table by device, network, hour and day, click type, conversion action or top vs. other — plus five typical findings that only show up once you segment.
Predefined reports, the report editor and auction insights 🔑 With a free account
The reports that come ready-made, how to build your own with the editor, how to schedule it by email, and the report that shows you who competes with you and how — auction insights.
Measurement mistakes: when the numbers lie and Smart Bidding believes them 🔑 With a free account
Everything as a primary conversion, navigation conversions inflating the data, duplicates, the thank-you page that vanished and the month Smart Bidding optimised towards nothing — with real cases.
Intermediate training
12 lessons · 1 h 59 minSeasonality adjustments and data exclusions: telling the algorithm what you know 🔒 Subscribers
The two tools for correcting Smart Bidding from the outside — announcing a short spike or drop in the conversion rate, and wiping a period of broken data from its memory — when to use them, when not to, and how to set them up without doing damage.
The judge: judging each campaign by its business target, not by the strategy target 🔒 Subscribers
The difference between what Smart Bidding chases and what the business needs, the «cross-mode» case (a campaign on target CPA judged on ROAS and vice versa), reference conversions, and the method for deciding when to move targets and budgets — and by how much.
Diagnosing Smart Bidding: symptoms, causes and the bid strategy report 🔑 With a free account
The symptom table (spend that collapses, CPA that climbs, endless learning, volume that vanishes) with its likely causes and how to check each one, how to read the bid strategy report, and the checklist to run before blaming the algorithm.
Bidding in Shopping: target ROAS by margin, real sales and POAS 🔒 Subscribers
Why a single ROAS for the whole catalogue is a mistake, how to set targets by margin group, the trap of judging Shopping by revenue (real sales, returns, cancelled orders) and the indicator that should be in charge: return on profit.
Remarketing in depth: behaviour-based lists, membership duration, exclusions and frequency 🔒 Subscribers
How to build lists that mean something (not «all visitors»), membership duration matched to the buying cycle, excluding people who already bought, capping frequency so you remind rather than stalk, dynamic remarketing and customer lists — and how to judge whether remarketing adds anything or just claims credit for sales.
Measuring Display honestly: view-through, windows, incrementality and experiments 🔒 Subscribers
Why view-through conversions inflate the numbers, which windows to use, the right question (what would have happened without the campaign?), the three methods for answering it — holdout experiment, geo experiment and reading the account total — and how to present Display to whoever pays for it.
Offline conversions: telling Google what happens after the form 🔑 With a free account
Auto-tagging and the GCLID, how to store the click identifier in your CRM, how to upload the conversions that happen off the website (qualified lead, sale, amount) by spreadsheet, API or integration, enhanced conversions for leads, and the deadlines and limits you have to respect.
Conversion value strategy: what each conversion is worth (and how to make Google chase it) 🔒 Subscribers
How to assign values that reflect real money — fixed by lead type, dynamic by order, margin-based, by probability of closing — the 50% rule for navigation conversions, the move to value-based bidding in lead generation, and the mistakes that make the value lie.
GA4 and Google Ads: linking, importing conversions, sharing audiences — and why they never match 🔑 With a free account
What the link gives you (GA4 events as conversions, GA4 audiences in Ads, Ads data in GA4), when to measure with GA4 and when with the Ads tag, the attribution and window differences that explain the discrepancies, and the healthy setup that stops you counting twice.
Advanced attribution: what data-driven attribution really measures and which decisions it supports 🔒 Subscribers
How data-driven attribution works, what changes between last click and DDA in the reports (and what doesn't), conversion paths and windows, the limits of any attribution inside Google Ads, and the rule for deciding budgets: attribution to allocate, incrementality to confirm.
Lead quality: scoring every contact and teaching Google the difference between a customer and a browser 🔒 Subscribers
Why the form is not the conversion, how a lead score is built from three layers (behaviour on the site, positive actions, source campaign), how it is recalibrated with the CRM, and how it is sent back to Google as a value so Smart Bidding optimises towards customers.
The advanced measurement audit: the 25-point list and the map of what reaches Google 🔑 With a free account
The full audit of a mature account — tag, consent, enhanced conversions, offline, values, duplicates, GA4, attribution — organised around a map of «which signal reaches Google, from where and with what value», plus an introduction to server-side tagging.
Advanced training
46 lessons · 7 h 45 minPerformance Max: opening the black box of your spend 🔒 Subscribers
PMax does not tell you where your money goes — but it can be worked out. How to estimate the real split between Search, Shopping, Display and YouTube, and what to do with what you find.
PMax reporting in 2026: channel performance, search terms, placements and what still can't be seen 🔒 Subscribers
Which breakdowns Performance Max offers today (the «Channel performance» report, search terms, placements, asset groups, assets), how to read them together to reconstruct where the money goes, which privacy thresholds trim them, and the method for judging each channel by its own yardstick.
Auditing a PMax campaign: the checklist and the incrementality test 🔒 Subscribers
The 20 points for auditing any Performance Max campaign (settings, exclusions, measurement, assets, reporting), how to prove whether it brings incremental conversions or just claims them (official experiment, controlled pause, geo test), and the final decision: scale, rein in or switch off.
Measuring and bidding in Demand Gen: view-through conversions, windows, strategies and a fair yardstick 🔒 Subscribers
The bidding strategies available (Maximize conversions, Target CPA, Maximize clicks, value), why view-through and engaged-view conversions inflate Demand Gen, which windows to use, how to set the target with a different yardstick from Search, the native A/B experiments and how to defend the campaign to whoever pays for it.
AI Max for Search: the promise, the components and the part you can't see 🔑 With a free account
What AI Max is (the automatic expansion layer on top of Search campaigns: dynamic broad matching, keywordless traffic, text customization and URL expansion), what it promises, how it gets switched on (often by default and in bulk) and why its problem is not performance but traceability.
Opacity by design: the three layers that switch off the light 🔒 Subscribers
Why the keyword stops mapping to the traffic in AI Max, how the search terms report's privacy threshold trims exactly the long tail where incremental traffic lives, why the reports don't reconcile with each other (each view with its own threshold), and the residue that has a name: the «no breakdown» bucket.
How to measure what you can't see: split by source, before/after with a control, and reconcile 🔒 Subscribers
The three-step method for judging AI Max from outside — splitting the spend by source (keyword baseline, dynamic broad, keywordless, no breakdown), comparing the opaque bucket with itself before and after activation using the baseline as a seasonality control (difference in differences), and the direct traceability test that reconciles combinations with the search terms report.
Two accounts, two results: when AI Max degrades and when it delivers 🔒 Subscribers
The two real, anonymised cases from the study — a real estate account (21 campaigns, bulk activation, 1% traceability, a red Pre/Post in every one) and a training account (CPA and ROAS identical to the baseline, a green verdict, but a third of the spend opaque and two campaigns that do go off the rails) — and the lesson the contrast teaches: the constant and the variable.
What the advertiser can do: the four principles and the AI Max controls 🔒 Subscribers
Measure by source and not by campaign, set the baseline before switching it on, watch whether the «no breakdown» bucket grows after activation, watch the drift and not just the launch — plus the controls Google does give you (components separately, brand exclusions, URL exclusions, negatives, AI Max experiments) and a decision for each scenario.
AI Max Analyzer in practice: install it, read the verdict and act 🔑 With a free account
How to install the free script (ten minutes from the panel), which tabs it builds in your spreadsheet (split by source, Pre/Post of the opaque bucket, combinations, terms and exclusions), how to read the traffic light per campaign and its recommendation, what to do for each colour and the five-minute weekly routine.
Cross-mode: campaigns bidding on CPA but judged on ROAS (and the other way round) 🔒 Subscribers
Why the bid strategy and the business target can live in different modes, the four cross-mode cases (leads of uneven value, ecommerce with new customers, brand on impression share judged on CPA, maximising without a target), how to translate a ROAS target into a CPA target and back, and when to change the strategy instead of judging across modes.
Bid strategy experiments: comparing bidding properly before changing an account 🔒 Subscribers
How to design a bid strategy experiment (CPA vs ROAS, a different target, portfolio vs its own strategy, with and without broad match, with and without AI Max), the traffic split, the duration set by latency and volume, how to read significance and effect size, the mistakes that invalidate an experiment, and how to take the winner into production without resetting everything.
From lead to customer: the real funnel Google cannot see, and what ignoring it costs 🔑 With a free account
The stages between the form and the sale (raw, contacted, qualified, proposal, closed), the typical rates by sector, how you work out the real cost per customer against Google's CPA, the effect of optimising towards forms (more volume, worse quality) and the economic case for lead scoring.
The lead's fingerprint (layer A): what your site knows about every contact before anyone has called them 🔒 Subscribers
The signals a snippet captures at the moment of the form — the fraud score inverted, time on page and real scrolling, pages viewed, returning visitor, typing cadence, time of day, device, field coherence (a valid phone number, the email domain, a plausible name), honeypot — how they are weighted inside the ~40 behaviour points, and how the GCLID is captured without breaking privacy.
Positive actions and source (layers B and C): what the lead does next and where they came from 🔒 Subscribers
The signals that arrive minutes or hours after the form (confirmed their email, answered the call, replied on WhatsApp, booked, downloaded) and how they reach you by webhook from the CRM or your email platform; the ranking of campaign types as a source prior (brand > search > Demand Gen > Display) with an override by ID, the Site Score of the placement and the floor of zero if it was blocked later; and the statistical block that grows with the data.
The three offline conversions: Raw Lead (= the rating), Qualified and Sale with an amount 🔒 Subscribers
How the conversion actions are designed so that Smart Bidding learns quality — Raw carrying the rating as its value the same day, Qualified when it is marked, Sale with the real amount — how they are configured (import from clicks, counting, windows, primary/secondary depending on the strategy), the automatic bulk upload by GCLID, the adjustments, and the rule that leads never leave the client's spreadsheet.
Recalibrating with ground truth: the calibration curve, lift per signal and manual scoring 🔑 With a free account
How you check that the rating actually predicts (a calibration curve by band: do leads on 80 qualify more than leads on 30?), the real performance by network and campaign that reorders the source prior, the lift of each signal in this particular client, the salesperson's manual verdict (Bad / Good / Sale) as field truth, and the monthly report that makes it all visible.
Lead Rating in practice: installation, the client's spreadsheet, the sales team and the first 60 days 🔒 Subscribers
How it is deployed (a spreadsheet per client, Apps Script with a webhook, the snippet on the site by plugin or proxy, a Google Ads script for the uploads), what the sales team sees and does every day, the initial configuration (campaign ranking, values, strategy), the first 60 days week by week, and the symptoms that something is not right.
What GAQL is: the language you use to ask Google Ads what the interface does not show 🔑 With a free account
Google Ads Query Language explained for non-programmers — what it is, why it exists, what makes it different from the interface (resources, fields, segments and metrics with fixed names), where it runs (API, scripts, the online query builder and validator) and the three things you can do with GAQL that you cannot do on screen.
The resources that matter: the map of GAQL tables for every question in this course 🔒 Subscribers
The tables (resources and views) that answer each need — campaign and ad_group, keyword_view with Quality Score and its components, search_term_view, shopping_performance_view by product, detail_placement_view and group_placement_view for placements, ad_group_ad_asset_view for RSA assets, campaign_budget, bidding_strategy, conversion_action, change_event — with their key fields and their traps.
The GAQL cookbook: ten queries that answer the questions from the whole course 🔒 Subscribers
Ten complete, annotated queries — search terms that convert without being keywords, keywords with low QS and high spend, IS lost to budget with a good CPA, RSA assets rated Low with volume, products that spend without selling, yesterday's new placements, conversions by action and campaign, recent budget changes, zero conversions with normal clicks, hour-of-day performance — ready to paste into a script or the validator.
Case: the small service business that goes from €1,500 to €8,000 a month without rebuilding the account 🔒 Subscribers
A real anonymised architecture for a service business (renovations/installations) with three services and two regions — from a single "General" campaign to six campaigns, two portfolios, brand kept separate, remarketing and Lead Rating — with the decisions taken at each budget step, the numbers before and after, and the mistakes that were avoided.
Case: long-cycle B2B lead generation — few leads, high value and a funnel that lasts months 🔒 Subscribers
An architecture for businesses with 10-30 leads a month and sales worth thousands of euros that take weeks to close — aggressive consolidation into portfolios, intermediate conversions (qualified, meeting, proposal) as the signal, values by stage, 90-day windows, Demand Gen and remarketing for the cycle, and why lead scoring is not optional here.
Migrating and restructuring without losing the history: the architecture change protocol 🔑 With a free account
How to rebuild an account (or migrate agency, manager account or measurement platform) while keeping the learning — what is inherited and what is not (QS history, lists, conversions), the phased protocol (freeze, measure, duplicate, overlap, switch off), letting two structures coexist for a while, data exclusions and how to communicate with the client.
What's new in measurement, privacy and AI agents (updated August 2026) 🔒 Subscribers
What has changed in measurement and in your relationship with the platform — enhanced conversions for leads as the main route for offline uploads, Consent Mode v2 now consolidated, Ask Advisor (the Gemini agent spanning Ads, Analytics, Merchant and Marketing Platform), the creation and optimisation agents inside Google Ads — what they offer, what risks they bring and how to live with a Google agent inside your account.
Tutorial · Calls (1/2): call assets, call-only ads and call reporting 🔑 With a free account
A step-by-step guide to setting up everything Google Ads offers for calls — the call asset (a tappable number next to the ad) at account, campaign and ad group level, with scheduling and a Google forwarding number; call-only ads; the call report (duration, source, time of day) and the decisions that come out of it.
Tutorial · Calls (2/2): measuring calls as conversions — from the ad and from the website 🔒 Subscribers
A step-by-step guide to the two call conversion actions — "Calls from ads" (forwarding number) and "Calls to a phone number on your website" (the number on the site is dynamically swapped after an ad click) — with the Google tag and the phone snippet, the duration threshold, value per call, what goes in as primary, how to verify it and the usual problems (a number that won't swap, switchboards, WhatsApp).
Tutorial · Offline conversions step by step: from the GCLID in the form to the sheet Google reads every day 🔒 Subscribers
The complete setup with no developer — switch on auto-tagging, capture the GCLID on the site and store it in the form (hidden field) and in the CRM/sheet, create the "Track conversions from clicks" actions, prepare the Google Sheet with the exact format, schedule the upload, upload adjustments and refunds, and verify that the conversions land in the right campaign.
Tutorial · Enhanced conversions for leads: uploading sales by email, without a GCLID 🔒 Subscribers
A step-by-step guide to the modern alternative to GCLID imports — capture the email/phone from the form with the tag (Tag Manager or direct, with automatic hashing), configure the "leads" type conversion action, prepare the upload sheet with email and phone instead of GCLID, comply with consent, and know when to combine it with GCLID.
Tutorial · Seasonality adjustments and data exclusions: setting them up properly, step by step 🔑 With a free account
Where they live, how to create them (scope, campaigns, devices, dates, percentage), how to work out the percentage of a seasonality adjustment from your own data, when to create a data exclusion and with which dates, how to check they were applied, how to edit or remove them, and three worked cases (Black Friday, a week of broken measurement, a 48-hour flash promotion).
Tutorial · Setting up an account's conversions from scratch: actions, categories, campaign goals and values 🔒 Subscribers
The complete tour of Goals → Conversions — creating each type of action (website, calls, import, app, store), its settings (category, value, counting, windows, attribution, primary/secondary, enhanced conversions), how Google groups actions into standard and custom goals, how to assign different goals to each campaign, and the setup template for lead generation and for ecommerce.
Tutorial · Report editor and dashboards: building the report the interface doesn't ship, and getting it every Monday 🔒 Subscribers
A step-by-step guide to the report editor — build a table with rows, columns and filters by dragging, turn it into a chart, save it, build a dashboard with several cards (campaigns, search terms, devices, conversions by action), share it and schedule it by email as PDF/CSV — with five ready-to-copy reports (spend vs plan, lost IS, converting search terms, CPA by device and hour, QS by ad group).
Tutorial · Looker Studio and Google Sheets: Google Ads reporting outside Google Ads 🔑 With a free account
A step-by-step guide to connecting Google Ads to Looker Studio (official connector, fields, blends with GA4 and Sheets, filters by account and dates, templates), building a four-page client report, and the alternative using the Google Ads add-on for Sheets (scheduled reports in a spreadsheet, with your own formulas) — when to use each and what neither can do.
Tutorial · Custom columns: formulas inside Google Ads (business CPA, POAS, traffic lights) 🔒 Subscribers
A step-by-step guide to creating formula columns in the interface — combined metrics, metrics filtered by conversion action, constants and functions — plus twelve useful columns ready to copy: qualified lead CPA, POAS with margin, % of L1, cost per call, total lost IS, real conversion rate, deviation vs target, and how to use them in filters, rules and column sets.
Tutorial · Local campaigns: PMax with store goals, store visits and local inventory ads 🔒 Subscribers
Step by step for businesses with physical shops — linking the Business Profile and verifying locations, switching on store visits and store sales measurement, creating a PMax with a store visits goal (the heir to local campaigns), its assets and signals, local inventory ads with Merchant Center, how to judge it (visits, calls, directions, local sales) and the mistakes multi-store accounts make.
Tutorial · Auditing an inherited account in two hours: the script, with checklist and deliverable 🔑 With a free account
The procedure for walking into an account you do not know and walking out with a diagnosis — access and ownership, measurement, structure, dangerous settings, bidding, search terms and negatives, ads, Display/PMax and fraud, budgets, change history — with the time per block, what to export, how to prioritise findings by euros and the audit report template.
Shopping in depth V: the Merchant Center reports nobody looks at — price competitiveness, best sellers, margin and listing performance 🔑 With a free account
The Merchant Center reports most people ignore and that decide the strategy — price competitiveness (your price against the benchmark, by product and category), price insights and suggested prices, best sellers and the fastest-growing products in the market (what sells even when you do not stock it), gross margin with cost_of_goods_sold, performance by product and by destination (ads vs free listings), and how to turn each report into a pricing, assortment or bidding decision — plus how to read them alongside Google Ads.
What Lead Scoring for Google Ads is (and who really needs it) 🔒 Subscribers
The methodology from Enrique del Valle's book from scratch — what sets it apart from CRM lead scoring, why bidding algorithms are chronically hungry for signals, the diet metaphor, and the honest list of who needs it and who can skip it.
The vertical line: L1 and L2, the border that orders all your signals 🔒 Subscribers
The centrepiece of the method — website interactions (L1, non-tangible) on the left, user interactions (L2, the leads) on the right; full examples for lead-gen businesses and for ecommerce, and the signal-selection strategies with their thresholds.
The power of points: what each signal is worth (and why 1,000 doesn't always go to the sale) 🔒 Subscribers
The method's scoring system — the 1,000-point scale, the relationship between conversions as the basis of the split, the counter-intuitive twist of spreading value along the funnel like a home-made attribution model, and the per-signal cookie-window structure.
Incremental conversions: adding signals without inflating the buyer 🔒 Subscribers
How to chain signals that overlap (call click + long call), the problem of the user who does everything, and the three solutions — no incrementals, dynamic incrementals with a custom CRM, and static incrementals with a range — with all their numbers.
The five phases of a Lead Scoring project, from the raw website to continuous readjustment 🔒 Subscribers
The full implementation plan — site study and new measurements, secondary conversions building history without touching anything, point assignment with data, switch-on by duplication starting with the highest-volume campaign, and the phase that never ends.
The method's metrics: % L1 Conv and % L1 Value, and the art of readjusting the mix 🔒 Subscribers
The two custom columns that govern the system — the share of clicks ending in L1 and the share of total value taken by L1 — with their 25% and 50% thresholds, the real case of the runaway S90 signal, and the point-readjustment protocol.
Lead Scoring in ecommerce: the static value and surfing seasonality 🔒 Subscribers
Why an online store also does lead scoring even though it sells with real amounts — the short/long cycle decision, the static-value sale as a vaccine against euphoria, the store's wealth of signals and the duplicated sales conversions trick.
Two real cases with numbers: education (CPA vs LS) and a SaaS that doubles 🔒 Subscribers
The course's two success stories in detail — the education campaign where lead scoring multiplied the enrolment rate by 5 with a cost per enrolment 3 times lower, and the SaaS signal structure with 30- and 90-day windows; with the lessons of each.
The next leap: real-time scoring of every lead with Lead Rating 🔒 Subscribers
Where the method is heading — scoring not just actions but EACH LEAD the moment it arrives, with its behaviour fingerprint, its later actions and its origin, returned to Google as a conversion with value; the Lead Rating tool from Ninja Scripts, piece by piece, and what changes the day you switch it on.
📗 Script manuals
The user manual of every script (the same one as the 📗 tab of its spreadsheet), here with search, audio, favourites and highlights. They do not count towards the training.3 lessons · 6 minGuardian manual · What this script does 🔑 With a free account
Sections of the Guardian user manual: What this script does · Config cells you edit. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Guardian manual · Cells the script manages itself (do not touch) 🔑 With a free account
Sections of the Guardian user manual: Cells the script manages itself (do not touch) · Tabs of this spreadsheet · How the emails work. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Guardian manual · Google limits 🔑 With a free account
Sections of the Guardian user manual: Google limits · TECHNICAL PARAMETERS (read only) · Information. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.