Frequently Asked Questions

A connector that lets Claude (Anthropic's AI) read and act on your Google Ads account. Claude can audit campaigns, find keyword gaps, add keywords, and check performance. We built it because we needed it ourselves — we're a small PPC agency in Estonia and we use this daily for client work.

In plain terms: ask Claude to audit your account (performance, visibility, wasted spend), find missing keywords and negative keywords, research competitors, and build Search or Performance Max campaigns — all from a normal conversation. See the prompt examples above for exact phrasing. Anything that writes to your account always shows you the plan first and waits for your yes.

There isn't one — the simplicity is the actual design goal, not marketing. Setup is copying one email address and one URL. After that you talk to Claude the same way you'd talk to a person. The only "catch" is that Claude still needs accurate input from you (what the product is, who it's for) to do good campaign work — it's not psychic, just fast and thorough once it has context.

Three steps: (1) Create an account on advertisingmcp.net and enter your Google Ads Customer ID. (2) Add our service account email as a Standard user in your Google Ads admin. (3) Paste your personal MCP URL into Claude (Settings → Connectors). The whole thing takes about 5 minutes. There's a step-by-step walkthrough in your dashboard after you sign up.

Both. Claude Desktop and claude.ai in the browser both support MCP connectors. Same setup, same URL.

No. Claude's free plan supports MCP connectors, so you can get started without paying for Claude. A paid Claude plan (Pro or higher) gives you more messages per day, which helps if you're running multiple audits in one session.

When you add a connector in Claude, you can set tools to "Always approve" so Claude doesn't show a permission popup on every call. We recommend turning this on — it makes the conversation flow naturally. Claude still asks for your confirmation before any write operation (like adding keywords) regardless of this setting.

No. Just describe what you want in plain language. The tool descriptions tell Claude what each tool does and when to use it, so Claude figures out the right approach on its own. You say "audit my account" and Claude chains the right tools together.

AdvertisingMCP includes built-in expert guides that Claude reads automatically before doing an audit. They contain our benchmarks (ROAS targets, visibility thresholds, match type rules, standard negative keywords for Finnish markets) and a structured report format. We update these guides regularly based on what we learn from real client work.

No. Write operations like adding keywords always go through a confirmation step — Claude shows you exactly what it plans to do and waits for your approval. Read operations (stats, audits) don't change anything.

Yes. Claude can build Search campaigns (ad groups, keywords, responsive search ads) and Performance Max campaigns with full asset groups. Every new campaign is created PAUSED and its daily budget is capped automatically — a human has to enable it in the Google Ads UI before it can spend. Bid adjustments and pausing existing campaigns are still in development.

Ask Claude to audit your account. It checks every campaign for spend vs conversions and flags campaigns with high spend but low or zero returns. Common sources of waste it identifies: campaigns spending without converting, broad match keywords triggering irrelevant searches, and missing negative keywords like "free" or "jobs" that attract non-buyers.

For ecommerce, our audit guide uses 590% as the baseline — meaning €5.90 in revenue for every €1 spent. Above that and your marketing is profitable. Between 300-590% there's room for optimisation. Below 300% usually means structural issues that need attention. For service businesses (leads, form fills, calls) ROAS doesn't apply — you'd look at cost per conversion instead. Claude applies the right framework automatically based on what it sees in your account.

Ask Claude to find keyword gaps. It fetches the landing pages your ads currently link to, reads their content (titles, headings, product names), and compares that against your actual keyword list. Any terms that appear on your pages but aren't in your ad groups are gaps. Claude suggests specific keywords with match types and the ad group they should go in. You can then approve and Claude adds them directly.

Our audit guide recommends Exact and Phrase match only. Broad match can work with Smart Bidding and strong negative keyword coverage, but in practice it often wastes budget on irrelevant queries — especially in smaller accounts or niche markets. When Claude audits your keywords, it flags any broad match terms and suggests switching to tighter match types.

Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing for searches that won't convert. Without them, you pay for clicks from people searching for things like "free", "salary", or "jobs" — none of whom are going to buy. Claude's audit checks for standard negatives that should be in every account and flags what's missing. Claude can also add true account-level negatives that apply automatically across Search, Shopping, and Performance Max.

That's what the Abs.Top % metric tells you — the percentage of your impressions that appeared at the very top of search results. Claude checks this per campaign and flags anything below 30% as LOW. The fix is usually raising bids, improving Quality Score, or both. Claude identifies which specific campaigns have this problem and how severe it is.

Yes. Enter your MCC ID in the dashboard. Claude can list all sub-accounts under it and you can specify which one to audit or work on. Say something like "list all accounts" and then "audit the Huoltolaukku account" and Claude targets the right one.

Yes, and this is one of the most popular use cases. If the prospect grants your MCC access to their account (standard agency onboarding), you can run a full audit through Claude in a few minutes. The structured report it produces is client-ready — overview, per-campaign breakdown, keyword gaps, prioritised recommendations. Many consultants use this as a free audit to win the management contract.

Only if you use our default service account. If you'd rather your own company name show up in clients' change history, set up your own Google Cloud service account from the Agency Setup page in your dashboard — it's a one-time, optional step aimed at agencies, and your clients then see your business, not ours.

No. One subscription covers your MCC and all accounts under it — unlimited accounts, no per-account fee. You just switch between accounts by telling Claude which one to work on.

The safety rails aren't just instructions Claude is told to follow — they're built into the connector itself, so they can't be skipped by a bad prompt or a leaked URL. Specifically: new campaigns are always created PAUSED regardless of what's asked, daily budgets are capped on our server independent of what's requested in the conversation, and every write action (keywords, negatives, campaigns, ads) is designed to show you the full plan and wait for your explicit approval first. A human has to manually enable a campaign in the Google Ads UI before it can spend anything.

We don't store any Google Ads data. Campaign metrics, keywords, ad copy — everything is fetched live from the API on each request and returned to you immediately. Nothing is persisted. Your MCP token is the only thing we store, and you can regenerate it any time.

Two ways: (1) Remove our service account email from your Google Ads admin (Admin → Access and security). (2) Regenerate your MCP token in the AdvertisingMCP dashboard, which immediately invalidates the old URL. Either one works independently.

There's nothing to actively cancel — subscriptions don't auto-renew. When you subscribe, that month or year is simply added on top of your current valid-until date. If you don't subscribe again, access just ends when that time runs out. No charge ever happens automatically after that.

Go to MCP Settings → Danger zone → Delete my account, then type DELETE to confirm. This immediately revokes your MCP URL and permanently wipes your saved Google Ads Customer ID, OpenRouter key, and any custom service account credentials. It's a two-step confirmation on purpose, since it can't be undone. This only deletes your AdvertisingMCP data — it doesn't affect your Google Ads account itself, and since nothing auto-renews, there's no billing to separately cancel.

As a security measure, we block access from a number of high-risk regions at the network level. This is a standard precaution to protect accounts and reduce automated abuse — it is not a commercial decision. Access is currently restricted from: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, and Vietnam. If you are a legitimate user in one of these countries, please contact us at [email protected] and we will find a solution.

Frequently. We use AdvertisingMCP daily for our own Google Ads management, so when we hit a limitation or think of a better approach, we build it. New tools and guide improvements ship as they're ready. The built-in audit guide evolves based on real account work — not theory.

Anderseen Digital, a small agency in Estonia. We run Google Ads for our own products and for clients — the founder has over 10 years of hands-on PPC experience. AdvertisingMCP started as an internal tool and we opened it up because other people wanted the same thing. We still use it more than anyone.

Email us at [email protected] — we typically reply within a day.