Fourth and last chapter of the AdsPulse playbook. The previous three work inside the account; this one looks outside: demand, competition, opportunity. These are the numbers you need before you spend, to plan a campaign or to present to a prospect. All four use cases are read-only.
The chapter closes with the use case that holds the whole playbook together: when none of the previous fifteen answers your question, the answer gets written in GAQL. You do not need to know how to write it: you need to ask to see it.
Keyword research and forecast
You are planning a campaign or a new market. The research starts from the landing page and a few seeds, not from an abstract list: the ideas arrive already tied to what the page sells. The next step, how much budget you need, uses exactly these numbers.
Start from the landing page [URL] and these seeds: [words]. Find keywords for Italy in Italian with volumes, 12-month trends and top-of-page bids. Then estimate clicks and cost with a max CPC of €1.50.
What you get. Keyword ideas with volumes and seasonality, plus a forecast of clicks, impressions and cost at the max CPC you gave.
Watch out. The forecast depends on the max CPC you give: ask for two or three scenarios. A forecast at €1, €1.50 and €2.50 says far more than a single figure, especially when you show it to a client.
Competitors and impression share
CPC is rising and you suspect a new competitor. Auction insights answer, but in the interface they have to be read campaign by campaign; here you ask once and drill down to the keywords that matter.
Who competes with [account] over the last 30 days? Show the domains with overlap rate and outranking share, then drill down to the keywords about [theme]. Separate the share lost to budget from the share lost to rank.
What you get. The rivals that matter, where they outrank you, and how much of the auction you are losing and why. The budget-versus-rank distinction is the same as in use case 03, and it leads to opposite decisions.
Watch out. Auction insights are not active on every installation: check that they are enabled on your access. If the answer does not contain them, it does not mean the account has no competitors.
Pitch for a prospect
You have read access to an account and a call in three days. The goal is not a full audit, which the prospect would not read, but three findings they cannot ignore, each with a figure next to it.
Analyse [prospect account] read-only over the last 90 days and find the three biggest losses across wasted spend, tracking and landing pages. For each one estimate the impact in euros and write the text of a slide.
What you get. Three quantified findings, already written for the deck: the problem, the estimate in euros, the data it comes from.
Watch out. Cite every figure with its period and source. A number the prospect cannot find in their own account ends the conversation: ask that every slide carries the exact period and the report the figure was taken from.
Any question, in GAQL
The standard reports do not answer your question. GAQL is the Google Ads API query language, and behind this use case is Genie, the specialist who writes custom queries: you describe the table you want, it writes and runs the query.
Write and run a GAQL query that shows, for [account], the keywords with a Quality Score below 5 and more than €100 of spend in the last 30 days. Show me the query as well.
What you get. The table you were looking for and the query that produced it. The second is worth as much as the first: it is the part you can reuse.
Watch out. Always ask to see the query: you can verify it, save it and reuse it on other accounts. A saved query is a new use case in your own playbook.
Where they sit in the week
In the typical week, 14 sits on Friday, the day you look outside the account; 13, 15 and 16 are used when needed. All of them are read-only: on a prospect’s account too, and on the client that arrived this morning.
End of the playbook, start of yours
Sixteen use cases are the starting point, not the perimeter. Every GAQL query you save, every prompt you rewrite with the seven rules in mind, becomes a use case of your own. Missing something you do every day? Tell us: the playbook grows with feedback from the beta. AdsPulse is in beta access at adspulse.dev.
The previous chapters: Routine and control, Audit and diagnosis, Optimisation and execution. The full map is in the playbook overview.