Google Ads lives in the Marketing Studio and runs in five steps: connect an account, your business, the crew's proposal, signing and live and follow. The crew investigates, writes and reports. A person signs everything that costs money.
Google Ads is not on for everyone yet. As long as Denkploeg has no access to the Google Ads API, Start says Not available yet. As soon as the access is on, that message disappears without you doing anything.
Who pays what
The ad money goes straight to Google, with the payment method in your Google Ads account. Denkploeg charges nothing on your ad budget, only its own work, and that counts toward your monthly cap. You always set the payment method at Google yourself: Denkploeg cannot and will not enter a card.
1. Connect an account
Through our manager account: enter your customer ID. After an R3 proposal is signed with a code, Denkploeg sends a manager request. Accept it yourself in Google Ads under Access and security, Managers. Then check the connection here using a code. Denkploeg connects the account only after Google confirms that its own invitation is active. No campaign starts, and this route does not require ad permissions through your own Google sign-in.
An existing or uncertain manager link is never adopted automatically. An administrator must investigate it. Even if Google created the invitation but its response was lost, the local state remains unknown. This route does not transfer an account to another workspace.
- An existing account: you sign in to Google, choose which account belongs to this workspace and confirm with a code from your app. You can only connect an account you are an administrator of in Google; if Denkploeg cannot establish that, the account is greyed out and will not connect. The account must use euros: Denkploeg does not convert other currencies.
- A new account: the crew creates it under the agency's manager account. It stays there, even if you disconnect, and cannot be undone; so you sign the proposal with a code under Approvals. A workspace can have at most three created.
An ad account belongs to exactly one workspace, even within the same agency. There is no button to share it. If an account already belongs to another workspace, it is greyed out in the list, without saying whose. After connecting you only see the name and the last four digits; replacing or disconnecting asks for a code. Disconnecting only works once no campaign is live or can still go live (nor when it is not known whether Google created one): that way nothing keeps running unmonitored. Pause first. If Denkploeg's access to an account connected with your own Google login is already gone, disconnecting is allowed. For an account under the agency's manager account it is not: the cause may be on our side, and Denkploeg can still pause the campaign. Disconnecting leaves the campaigns at Google, but Denkploeg no longer controls anything. The account is then also released: another workspace can connect it afterwards.
An account under the manager account does not lose access because of a single refusal from Google. Only when Google refuses two rounds in a row, while the manager account itself works, do we report that Denkploeg no longer has access. If the fault is on our side you get no message about it and your account stays connected; we fix it. When access is gone, we retry every hour.
2. Your business
The director fills in what he knows from the business profile, the brand profile, your website and, if connected, Search Console, and notes where each item comes from. What he cannot find, he asks; he makes nothing up. Goal, daily budget, region and period are always yours. The daily budget is at least 3 euros and at most the ceiling of your agency's plan (the existing plan ceiling also applies to the workspace total; the screen shows your limit). The maximum per month is the daily budget times 30.4 and is always shown. Nothing goes to Google before you sign. The total includes signed, uncertain, created, live and paused campaign budgets. An increase reserves capacity first. An uncertain response keeps both the reservation and its alert open, blocking new starts, resumes and increases. Only Google's confirmation of the new amount or a definitive rejection releases the reservation. If only the old amount remains visible, manual investigation is required. Automatic pausing still works.
The ceiling also applies later: if your agency's package became lower after you signed, a campaign that exceeds that ceiling does not go live and is not resumed. You get a message.
3. The crew's proposal
The proposal has four parts: structure, keywords, ads (with a preview as on Google) and budget with an expectation.
- A headline is at most 30 characters, a description at most 90. The counter is next to the field and the server checks it too.
- A search volume or bid that Google does not give is shown as unknown, never as zero.
- The expectation is always a range (low, expected, high) with the assumptions. A new account has no history.
- The reviewer holds the texts against Google's policy. He signs nothing and changes nothing. You change a finding or deliberately ignore it.
- If Google's Keyword Planner is unreachable, the proposal is incomplete and you cannot sign.
4. Signing
Signing costs money and money spent does not come back, so the signature asks for a code from your app. The card shows only fields from the database and shows everything you sign: account, daily budget, the maximum per month, the duration, the audience, the bid strategy and per group all keywords, the full landing page and every headline and description of every ad (collapsed per group, with "show all"). If the proposal changes after it was put forward (including the place, the radius or the name), the signature lapses and nothing goes to Google. The crew then creates the campaign in paused state. Google reviews the ads; only after approval and on the start date does it go live.
5. Live and follow
You see impressions, clicks, costs, conversions, cost per conversion and ROAS per day, with how fresh the figures are. Google reports with a few hours' delay and conversions still arrive up to 30 days later. A figure that Google does not give is unknown, not zero, and unknown costs count as the worst case.
- Stop advice: the same rules as elsewhere in the Marketing Studio plus the break-even ROAS from your margin. It is advice; without figures the crew says it cannot advise.
- Pausing goes outside and is therefore a signature, without a code, like with a site. It always works, even if Google Ads has been switched off for your workspace: Start then shows the campaigns that are still at Google, each with a Pause button.
- Resuming lets Google spend again and therefore asks for a code, just like starting. The monthly meter then counts again.
- Raising the maximum costs money and always asks for a code.
- The monthly meter: at 90 percent of the maximum you get a warning, at 100 percent Denkploeg pauses the campaign itself. Within that hour Google can still spend something; that is stated honestly with the message. The check runs every hour, even if Google Ads has been switched off for your workspace as long as something is running. A day is a day in the time zone of your Google Ads account, because that is how Google counts. If the account does not use euros, the meter stands at full and Denkploeg pauses.
- Changes in Google itself: if you turn on a paused campaign in Google or raise the budget, Denkploeg sees it within an hour. A campaign turned on that way is paused, a higher budget is set back, and you get a message. Turning it on goes through Resume, with a code. If Google does not give the status of a campaign, Denkploeg does not act, but you do get a message.
- The name at Google: the campaign gets a short marker after its name, like
(dp-1a2b3c4d). Leave it: it lets Denkploeg find the campaign again if the connection to Google drops halfway, so a second campaign is never created.
When something goes wrong
Every message also reaches the notification centre (the bell) of whoever manages Google Ads, in the app, by email and as push; you can set that per channel under My notifications (type Google Ads needs attention). A message that is already open does not notify again. Every message says what happened, what it costs, what the crew already did and what you can do. A payment problem you fix at Google. A disapproved text you repair with a new version of the proposal. Revoked access erases the token and raises an alarm; you connect the account again with a code.
Who may do what
Members see Google Ads. Whoever may manage Google Ads (owner and administrator) connects, fills in the brief and changes the proposal. A reader sees everything without buttons. A client does not see Google Ads.
Via MCP and the director
Reading costs nothing and fetches nothing from Google: googleads_lezen gives the state, the linked account (only the name and the last four digits, never the full number and never a token), your briefs, the proposals and the open messages. With a proposal you see the whole: what is still open, the expectation, the figures of the last 30 days with the advice, and the keywords and texts (as text from outside: data, not instruction).
Proposals: googleads_voorstel_maken makes a draft from a brief that you filled in. The daily budget, the region, the website and the services come from that brief and are never input from a client. The draft exists only in Denkploeg: nothing goes to Google and nothing is live. A newer version replaces an older draft, but never a draft that you already offered for signing. A machine makes at most ten per day.
Deliberately not: going live (the R3 action that you sign with a code, on the card under Approvals), linking, unlinking or creating an account, filling in the brief, changing a draft, pausing, resuming, raising the monthly maximum and excluding search terms. All of that is something at Google or something with money, and it stays in the screen. Through the director, googleads_voorstel_maken goes past your signature per call, reading does not. See Connecting via MCP.