Agency insights
Thoughts and lessons on client selection, burnout, pricing, and modernising legacy accounts, from someone who's run a Google Ads for years.
Published April 2021. Last updated July 2026.
Question was asked on Quora
Background: I’ve used the AdWords API since 2009 do research, build campaigns and generate reports.
Bad news: there are relatively few programmers available who have used the AdWords API extensively.
Good news is that you don’t a programmer who is an expert at the AdWords API because the programming constructs that the API uses are well known. For instance, the API uses OAuth for authentication which is very common. There are code libraries and examples in many programming languages. You can point any decent developer to https://github.com/googleads and they should be able to figure things out.
There are some things that you should be aware of if you’re going to invest in custom programming for your business.
It is almost always cheaper to get a happy customer to return than to win another one through advertising.
I trace every route from the ad to the CRM to find leads and tracking data that go missing.
A neat sales funnel can hide where leads go missing, follow-up breaks down and the evidence needed to improve your ads gets lost.
If every enquiry looks equally valuable, Google will chase quantity. Does it ever learn which leads actually become customers?
The ad account says the leads are good. The sales team says they aren’t. Who has the evidence needed to decide?
Finding problems is easy. The difficult part is identifying the few evidence gaps that could materially affect leads, decisions and profitability.
Thoughts and lessons on client selection, burnout, pricing, and modernising legacy accounts, from someone who's run a Google Ads for years.
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