Campaign architect

Turn an account's real performance into a campaign plan: which campaigns, which type, which budget, which bidding stage, which goal. The plan is a document; building it is the job of search-launch and demand-gen-launch.

When to use

• A new quarter or a re-plan of an existing account.
• A new account that needs a structure before anything is built.
• "How much should each campaign get?" with more than one campaign involved.

Inputs

Ask once, all together, for whatever the data can't answer:

• Tracks: which audiences are separate businesses (for example business buyers vs consumers).
• Focus lines: the products or services that must get protected budget.
• Markets and languages (the languages each landing page exists in).
• Monthly budget per track, and a target cost per lead if they have one.

Steps

Call account_profile first (currency, writes, linked GA4).

1. Baseline, last 30 and 90 days (read-only). Don't plan from a blank sheet: the current account shows what to fix. If the account has no campaigns yet, run tracking-audit before building anything. GAQL has no LAST_90_DAYS: for 90 days use segments.date BETWEEN 'YYYY-MM-DD' AND 'YYYY-MM-DD'.
   • get_account_summary, get_campaign_performance, get_campaign_budgets, get_keyword_performance, and the top search terms by cost with run_gaql_query.
   • Network split per campaign: SELECT campaign.name, segments.ad_network_type, metrics.cost_micros, metrics.clicks FROM campaign WHERE segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS. A "Search" campaign spending mostly outside Google Search is a Display campaign in disguise.
   • Spend outside the target areas: geographic_view.location_type and user_location_view.targeting_location (see the ads-audit skill for the queries).
   • What each campaign bids on: campaign_conversion_goal and conversion_goal_campaign_config.
   • Search demand: keywords with almost no impressions over weeks mean little search demand in those markets.
2. Real leads. If GA4 is linked, ga4_custom_report with dimensions: ["landingPage", "eventName", "sessionDefaultChannelGroup"] and metrics: ["keyEvents", "sessions"] for the same period. Cost per lead must be paid-only: use only the "Paid Search" rows for Search, and "Cross-network" / "Display" / "Paid Video" rows for Demand Gen. Work out cost per lead per line from Ads cost and those GA4 leads, not from Ads conversions alone.
3. Measurement gate. If campaigns don't bid on a working, audience-specific goal, stop and recommend the tracking-audit skill first. Bidding on broken measurement wastes the whole plan. guide("measurement").
4. Choose campaign types:
   • Buyers search the product, category or brand → Search.
   • Little or no search demand (keywords barely serve) → Demand Gen to create demand, plus a small Search campaign on problem or benefit terms.
   • Own brand terms → a small separate Search campaign, so brand clicks don't flatter non-brand cost per lead.
   • Reaching decision-makers before they search → Demand Gen with a business audience, judged on engaged visits and leads.
5. Structure rules:
   • One campaign = one budget = one goal = one audience. Separate business and consumer campaigns, always.
   • Focus lines get their own campaign. Split a portfolio when one line's volume starves another.
   • No shared budgets. No Dynamic Search Ads.
   • Countries share a campaign at first; split one out only when its cost per lead differs by more than about 50%, or it needs a guaranteed budget.
   • Build in waves: core Search first, Demand Gen as soon as creative exists, awareness later.
6. Naming convention (pipe-delimited, fixed order, so the UI sorts and filters by it): <Brand> | <B2B or B2C> | <Line> | <Search or DG> | <Markets> | <Period>; ad groups <Product> | <Theme> | <Language>; lists NEG | <Purpose>; goals <Audience> Leads.
7. Budget split:
   • Per track first, then per campaign by strategic priority and expected lead value, not by last period's spend.
   • Brand protection gets the smallest share (around 5–10% of its track).
   • Each daily budget should be at least 1× the target cost per lead, ideally 2–3×. A campaign that can't buy about 15–30 conversions a month should be merged or start on clicks.
   • Demand Gen needs more conversion volume to learn. If its budget can't buy about 30 conversions a month on its goal, launch it on MAXIMIZE_CLICKS (supported by ads_create_demand_gen_campaign) and judge it on engaged visits and leads.
   • Flag any campaign below that floor instead of silently accepting it.

8. Bidding stage per campaign:

   Stage	Search	Demand Gen
   Launch, little history	Maximize clicks with a CPC cap (about the line's historical average CPC)	Maximize conversions when the goal records and the budget allows; otherwise Maximize clicks
   Brand campaign	Manual CPC, low bid	—
   About 15–30 conversions in 30 days (review in week 3)	Switch from clicks to maximize conversions	Stay
   About 30+ conversions a month and a stable cost per lead for 2–4 weeks	Add a target CPA at the achieved level, never below	Same

   No bidding, goal or audience changes in the first 1–2 weeks; one change per campaign per review. Bidding strategy changes are made in the Google Ads interface (Campaign → Settings → Bidding); no tool does it yet.

9. Goals and negatives:
   • One custom goal per audience, made of exactly that audience's lead actions. Page views stay secondary.
   • Shared negative lists by audience, phrase match:
     • NEG | Global on everything: jobs, courses, free, irrelevant industries, in every language.
     • NEG | B2B - Consumer terms on business campaigns: near me, reviews, at home…
     • NEG | B2C - Trade terms on consumer campaigns: supplier, wholesale, used, distributor…
     • Brand terms as negatives on non-brand campaigns.
   • Don't negate "price" for business buyers: they search "<product> price".
10. Standard settings for every new campaign:
    • Location: people in the location (presence).
    • Languages: every language the landing page exists in (Google infers the languages a user understands; target every language the landing page exists in).
    • Search: Google Search only (partners and Display expansion off).
    • Own budget, campaign-level custom goal, created paused.
    • In the interface: auto-apply recommendations off and automatically created assets off; Demand Gen final URL expansion off.
11. Transition. New campaigns run in parallel with the ones they replace for about 7 days, then the old ones are paused. Keep an old campaign running if it's the only source of a lead type the new structure doesn't cover yet.

12. Optional foundations, after the user approves the plan:

    • ads_create_custom_goal per audience; it needs conversionActionIds (get them with the conversion_action query in tracking-audit).
    • ads_negative_list to create the shared lists (attach them when the campaigns exist).

    Each one is a preview first, applied only after a yes.

Output

One plan document (Markdown, or HTML if they want to share it):

# <Account> plan: <period>
## Diagnosis (what the baseline showed, with numbers)
## Campaign map
| Campaign (named) | Type | Audience | Markets | Languages | Daily budget | Bidding stage | Goal |
## Budget split (per track, per campaign, the floor check)
## Goals and negative lists
## Standard settings
## Transition and review plan (launch day, day 3, week 1, week 3, monthly)
## Build order → hand off to search-launch / demand-gen-launch

Never

• Never create campaigns in this skill; hand each campaign row to search-launch or demand-gen-launch.
• Never propose shared budgets, Dynamic Search Ads, or one campaign that mixes business and consumer goals.
• Never size a daily budget below one target cost per lead without flagging it.
• Never quote industry averages as targets; plan from the account's own baseline (guide("benchmarks") only explains how to read numbers).
• If the profile is read-only (no write tools), the plan is still complete; tell the user that creating the goals and lists needs npx google-marketing-agent accounts set <alias> writes true and an MCP client restart.