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 💰 Bids and budgets lessons across all levels.
Basic training
11 lessons · 1 h 42 minThe Google Ads auction: what happens every time somebody searches 🔑 With a free account
The mechanism that decides which ads appear, in what order and how much each one pays — and why the highest bidder does NOT always win.
What you control and what the algorithm decides: the advertiser's levers 🔑 With a free account
The decision map of an account — keywords, ads, bids, budget, targeting and measurement — and the ever-shifting border between what you command and what Google automates.
How to organise your campaigns (and why names matter less than you think) 🔑 With a free account
Real criteria for splitting campaigns — goal, product, location, budget, brand vs generic — a naming convention that survives the years, and the reason professionals identify campaigns by their ID.
The campaign settings that can ruin you without you knowing 🔑 With a free account
Search partners, Display expansion, «presence or interest» in locations, languages, ad rotation, device adjustments — the boxes Google ticks by default and that are worth reviewing before you switch any campaign on.
The daily budget: how it really works (and why one day you spend double) 🔑 With a free account
The daily average, the double-spend cap, the 30.4-day monthly limit, the «limited by budget» warning, how to set your first budget and when a shared budget makes sense.
The map of bidding strategies: manual, automated and Smart Bidding 🔑 With a free account
What each strategy does (Manual CPC, Enhanced CPC, Maximize clicks, Maximize conversions, Target CPA, Maximize conversion value, Target ROAS, Target impression share) and which to choose depending on the stage of the account.
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.
Where NOT to touch: the ten management mistakes that sabotage an account 🔑 With a free account
Changing targets every other day, cutting the budget of what works, pausing at weekends, dangerous automated rules, accepting recommendations blindly... and the change rule that avoids nearly all of them.
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.
Money mistakes: impossible targets, itchy hands and recommendations accepted blindly 🔑 With a free account
The «wished-for» target CPA that switches the campaign off, budget cut from what works, daily changes, recommendations applied in bulk and the Display expansion nobody turned on — real cases.
Intermediate training
18 lessons · 2 h 53 minBroad match with Smart Bidding: how to test it without burning money 🔒 Subscribers
Why modern broad only works with automated bidding, how to set up a clean experiment (50/50, one ad group, negative seatbelt), what to measure, when it wins and when it does not, and the account pattern that integrates it.
Smart Bidding from the inside: signals, prediction and what the algorithm cannot know 🔑 With a free account
How Google turns the signals of each auction into a bid, what data feeds it, the «top signals» in the bid strategy report, and the algorithm's three blind spots that are still your job.
Portfolio strategies and shared budgets: pooling data without losing control 🔑 With a free account
When to group campaigns into a portfolio (volume, a common target), the maximum and minimum bid limits, how to combine a portfolio with a shared budget, the typical mistakes and a portfolio structure for a mid-sized account.
Seasonality 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.
From manual bidding to Smart Bidding without sinking the account: the transition plan 🔒 Subscribers
How to move from manual or enhanced CPC to target CPA/ROAS in four phases — prepare the measurement, choose the bridge strategy, set the first target from the data, and the four weeks of watching — with the normal symptoms and the alarming ones.
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.
Where QS hits: the position leapfrog and how much money is at stake 🔑 With a free account
The threshold mechanism that lets an advertiser with a QS of 9 and the lowest bid leapfrog someone bidding twice as much, the non-linear relationship between QS and CPC, and a calculation of how much more (or less) the same budget buys depending on the account's effective QS.
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.
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.
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.
Anatomy of impression share: how much of the market you buy and what holds you back 🔑 With a free account
The five share metrics (search IS, top, absolute top, lost IS to budget, lost IS to rank), how they are calculated and how to read them together to know whether you can grow, at what cost and in which direction — the foundation of all planning.
Response curves: diminishing returns and the marginal cost of the next conversion 🔒 Subscribers
Why doubling the budget does not double conversions, how to draw the spend → conversions curve of a campaign from your own data and with the Performance Planner, what marginal CPA is and how it decides where the next euro goes — the concept that separates managing from spending.
The Performance Planner: useful forecasts (and their limits) 🔑 With a free account
What the Performance Planner does, how to build a monthly plan and read its curves, which campaign types it supports and which it no longer does (2026 changes), how to use it to negotiate budget and why its figures are a starting point, not a promise.
Splitting the budget across campaigns: the marginal method, the rules and the calendar 🔒 Subscribers
From a monthly total to daily budgets per campaign — the six-step method based on target attainment, lost IS and marginal CPA, the ring-fenced budgets (brand, remarketing, testing), how to handle seasonality and the mistakes that throw the split off.
Controlling monthly spend: pacing, variances, alerts and a month-end with no surprises 🔑 With a free account
How to track spend against plan day by day (expected pace, running total, projection), which variances are normal and which are warning you about a problem, the alerts worth having, what to do mid-month and how to close without overshooting or undershooting.
Annual planning: seasonality, peaks, reserve and a budget that grows with results 🔒 Subscribers
How to build the twelve-month plan from your history (a seasonality index per month and per campaign), when to raise ahead of a peak and by how much, the reserve for the unexpected and for testing, budget tied to goals (not to a fixed percentage) and how to present it to whoever signs it off.
Advanced training
37 lessons · 6 h 11 minMeasuring 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.
Advanced portfolios: designing the bid strategy architecture of a large account 🔑 With a free account
How target CPA and target ROAS portfolios are designed in accounts with dozens of campaigns (by economics, by conversion cycle, by country and currency), the bid limits and when to use them, cross-account strategies in an MCC, migrating campaigns between portfolios without resetting learning, and the architecture mistakes that cost the most.
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.
The advanced judge: rules, thresholds, windows and the full decision matrix 🔒 Subscribers
The complete specification of the business target judge — windows adjusted for latency, minimum volume, compliance bands, the verdict × lost IS × trend → action matrix (budget, target, nothing), maximum steps, waiting periods, loose campaigns versus portfolios, and the record that makes every move auditable.
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.
Smart Bidding beyond Search: Demand Gen, PMax, Shopping and video under the same judge 🔒 Subscribers
What changes when you judge and move bids in automated campaigns — view-through conversions, different latencies, targets that coexist with channel opacity, the API limits on what a script can mutate in each type — and how to bring every campaign in the account under a single budget and target logic.
Anomalies, currencies and safety: keeping the judge from doing harm 🔒 Subscribers
The data that fools an automated bidding system (expensive clicks with no conversion because of latency, conversions at zero from broken measurement, one-day spikes, massive offline uploads, other people's changes), the anti-anomaly thresholds and why they must scale with each account's currency, the "if it fails, it touches nothing" design, the absolute limits and the monthly audit of the judge itself.
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.
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.
Dynamic labels and catalogue segmentation: margin, turnover, seasonality and performance as structure 🔒 Subscribers
How to turn business data (margin, stock turnover, newness, seasonality, recent performance) into custom labels recalculated every day, the margin × performance matrix that decides which campaign and which target each product belongs to, the rules for moving products automatically between campaigns, and the limits that stop the catalogue dancing about.
Architecture principles: how to design an account that can grow without being rebuilt 🔑 With a free account
The seven principles of a scalable account — separate by economics, consolidate for learning, protect the brand, keep universal things at account level, identify by ID, measure before structuring, document — the permanent conflict between control and volume, and how to decide the size of each piece from the data it generates.
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: the agency (or multi-country brand) running thirty accounts from one manager account 🔒 Subscribers
An operating architecture for a fleet — manager and sub-manager account structure, account templates and conventions, shared lists and exclusions at manager level, cross-account portfolios, manager-account scripts that sweep the fleet, the per-account dashboard (spend vs plan, anomalies, measurement) and how the work is split between the agent, the scripts and the people.
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 bidding and budgets (updated August 2026) 🔒 Subscribers
What has changed in Smart Bidding and budgets over the last year — journey-aware bidding (beta), the expansion of Smart Bidding Exploration to PMax and Shopping, demand-led pacing (coming soon), campaign total budgets, the Performance Planner changes — with their class, what they mean for your judge and your planning, and the recommended action.
How to evaluate a new feature before adopting it: the six-step protocol and the monthly cycle 🔒 Subscribers
The protocol for deciding on any new feature — read the official source, classify it, check what switched itself on, estimate the impact with your own data, test with an experiment or a pilot account, decide and document — applied to an example (Smart Bidding Exploration), plus the monthly cycle that keeps this module and your accounts up to date.
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 · 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 · A custom experiment from start to finish 🔑 With a free account
Step by step through the Experiments page — creating the experiment from a campaign, choosing what changes in the trial version (strategy, target, match type, landing page, ads, AI Max), the traffic split and the split type (search-based or cookie-based), the dates, how to read the results panel with its confidence intervals, and how to apply the winner or end without applying.
Tutorial · Automated rules used properly: five alert rules and one safety rule 🔒 Subscribers
Step by step for creating automated rules that alert you (runaway daily spend, zero conversions, CPA out of range, keywords with no impressions, disapproved ads) and the only one that acts on its own (pausing if account spend passes an absurd ceiling) — with the exact setup (level, condition, frequency, data range, email), the traps of rules that touch bids, and how to review the log.
Tutorial · Ad scheduling and bid adjustments: when they still count under Smart Bidding 🔒 Subscribers
Step by step through ad scheduling (the calendar per campaign, time blocks, exceptions) and bid adjustments by device, location, audience and time of day — what each one does under manual bidding and under Smart Bidding (only −100% applies), how to decide them with the hour and device report, and three template setups (local business with opening hours, 24-hour ecommerce, B2B).
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 IV: campaign architectures — standard vs PMax with a feed, priorities, partitions and per-product bidding 🔒 Subscribers
The three real architectures (standard Shopping with priorities, PMax with a feed, hybrid) and when each one wins; the mechanics of high/medium/low priority with cascading negatives to separate generic, product and brand queries; partitions by product_type, brand, custom labels and item ID; the "Everything else" group; ROAS by margin and by band; the long-tail, new-arrivals and clearance campaigns; per-product bidding; and the four mistakes that sink Shopping accounts.
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.
Goodbye CPA, hello ROAS: value-based bidding and the sister campaigns 🔒 Subscribers
Why lead scoring demands a change of bidding strategy — the labelled diet, how value-based bidding changes what the algorithm understands, the three launch options, and the sister-campaign pattern — the CPA one feeds the ROAS one until the younger sister becomes the leader.
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.
Day-to-day operation: the starting ROAS, the concept of squeezing, and the tricks of the trade 🔒 Subscribers
With the system running, the operation — what ROAS to set at launch, how and when to squeeze to reach the conversions that generate real business, the law of 9 and 1, the timestamp in the campaign name and the % cost column.
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.14 lessons · 1 h 3 minSmart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Introduction 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Introduction. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Run modes 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Run modes. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Auto-Rollback 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Auto-Rollback. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Scenario suggestions 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Scenario suggestions. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Seasonality 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Seasonality. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Available labels 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Available labels. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Scenarios 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Scenarios. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Configuration (Config tab) 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Configuration (Config tab). The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Day-Stats tab 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Day-Stats tab. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · History tab 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: History tab. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Email system 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Email system. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Typical use cases 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Typical use cases. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Frequently asked questions 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Frequently asked questions. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.
Smart Bidding Ninja Script manual · Known limitations 🔒 Subscribers
Section of the Smart Bidding Ninja Script user manual: Known limitations. The same content the script writes in the 📗 Manual tab of its spreadsheet, here with search, audio, favourites and highlights.