Guides for AI-run ad operations

AI agents can read, reason about, and act on your Google Ads account. Here's how they work, what they automate, and why human approval still matters.

A practical guide to Google Ads automation: when to use automated rules, scripts, or AI agents — and exactly what's safe to automate vs keep manual.

Platform ROAS can mislead. Learn how to join Google Ads with BigQuery and your own revenue data in SQL to measure true, profit-aware return on ad spend.

MCP is the open standard that lets AI agents safely connect to your tools and data. Here's what it is, how it works, and why it matters for ad ops.

As AI takes on ad ops, human-in-the-loop keeps you in control. Learn how approval gates, spend caps and audit logs reduce risk — and what regulators expect.

Running many Google Ads accounts from one manager account? Learn how AI helps agencies scale audits and optimizations across accounts — with guardrails.

Plain-English definitions of the ad-operations and AI terms used across Agent Planners — ROAS, CPA, MCC, RSA, PMax, GAQL, MCP, approval gate and more.

Google's official Google Ads MCP server is read-only and runs locally. Here's what it covers, what a full read-write MCP adds, and how to configure either one in Claude Code, Claude Desktop or Codex.

Google ships an official Google Analytics MCP server for reading Google Analytics. Here's what it covers, what a read-write MCP adds, how to configure it, and the Google Analytics dimension trap that produces confidently wrong answers.

Meta's official Ads MCP server is remote, OAuth-gated and can write — 29 tools, with everything it creates landing paused. Here's how it compares, how to configure either route, and the budget-unit trap that costs 100x.

TikTok announced an Ads MCP server in May 2026, but it was still not generally available months later. Here's the honest status, what you can use in the meantime, and the TikTok-specific rules that break automation.

Query Search Console performance data from an AI agent, join it to ad spend in the same session, and submit sitemaps — with the scope detail that decides whether writes work at all.

Query BigQuery from an AI agent alongside your ad accounts, and understand why the write path is deliberately the narrowest one on the platform.

Connect Google Ad Manager to an AI agent for inventory, orders, line items and yield reporting — with the GAM metric names that quietly mean something other than they look like.

Connect Google AdSense to an AI agent for revenue, RPM and placement reporting, plus ad unit and custom channel writes — joined to your other monetization platforms in one session.

Connect Google AdMob to an AI agent for app revenue, eCPM and mediation reporting — with the metric that does not exist and the OAuth scope tier that decides your review burden.

Connect DV360 to an AI agent for line items, insertion orders and reach reporting — including the asynchronous report behaviour that breaks naive MCP tools.

Connect Campaign Manager 360 to an AI agent for ad serving, placements and attribution reporting — the ad-server view that sits underneath your buying platforms.

Shopify ships its own MCP servers for storefront and development. Here's what they cover, what a commerce-plus-ads MCP adds, and why connecting a second store used to be dangerous.

SHOPLINE has no official MCP server. Here's how to reach store orders, products and its own reporting API from an AI agent, alongside the ad accounts driving the traffic.

Connect GTM to an AI agent to audit what's firing and draft triggers, variables and tags — with publishing deliberately out of reach of any automated caller.

Connect Google Merchant Center to an AI agent for product, issue and feed data — with the registration wall and the advanced-account error that reads like a permissions problem.

Connect YouTube to an AI agent for channel and video analytics, alongside the ad accounts buying against the same audience — with the one write that can never be undone.

Connect SA360 to an AI agent for reporting across engine accounts and offline conversion upload — with a clear account of the one thing SA360's API genuinely cannot do.

Connect Bing Ads v13 to an AI agent — 25 reads, 21 writes, each write queued for approval or held to the change caps as the key allows — with the API traps that only show up when you actually run the write chain.

Reddit had not shipped an official Ads MCP server as of September 2026. Here is a hosted one — 30 reads, 31 writes, every write bound to the ad account you picked and the irreversible ones held for a person — with the Claude and Codex config and the Reddit API rules measured on a live account.

LinkedIn had not shipped an official Ads MCP server as of September 2026. Here is a hosted one — 26 reads, 41 writes, money already in major units, and lead form answers redacted on every lane.

Snap had not shipped an official Ads MCP server as of September 2026. Here is a hosted one — 23 reads, 25 writes, amounts in major units rather than Snap's micro-currency, and every delete held for a person because Snap has no undo.

Pinterest's own MCP server is in alpha with a handful of agency partners. Here is a hosted one you can configure today — 27 reads, 32 writes — with the Claude and Codex config and the Pinterest API behaviours that differ from its own spec.

Klaviyo's official MCP server can send campaigns and edit profiles. Here is one that reports and drafts but never sends — 13 reads, 40 writes, the writes opt-in per scope — with the Claude and Codex config and the Klaviyo limits that shape every query.

HubSpot's official remote MCP server reads and writes your CRM as you. Here is one that answers in counts — contact details never return over MCP — with 17 reads, 31 writes, the Claude and Codex config, and why HubSpot and your ad platforms disagree.

Stripe's official MCP server can reach refunds, subscription cancellations and invoices. Here is one where nothing that moves money is a tool — 10 reads, 14 writes, catalogue only — with the Claude and Codex config and the minor-unit trap.

X runs an official Ads MCP server — and on X's Ads Starter plan it is the only Ads API that answers. What it offers, what it leaves to you, and a hosted setup with 10 reads, 8 approval-gated writes and every write bound to the ads account you picked.

GitHub's official MCP server is the right tool for coding. For a marketing agent — release notes, issue triage, traffic, and site fixes as a draft pull request — here is a guarded alternative: 15 reads, 7 approval-gated writes, no merge, no delete, never the default branch.