Writing AdWords Ads with Google Spreadsheet

I’ve been using Google Docs more and more lately, and wanted to use their Spreadsheet for some AdWords bulk writing, but needed a letter counter to be sure my titles and ad lines were short enough to work.

PPCProz.com has the code for Excel here: http://blog.ppcproz.com/2009/02/3-secrets-creating-adwords-ads.html

So it was just a question of converting it to Google’s spreadsheet. Google spreadsheet doesn’t support formulas in conditional coloring, so I had to embed the formulas in the cells, then apply conditional coloring. Not too much harder, and I tweaked it to show the number of remaining characters until you go over the limit, then turn red. Here’s how:

Here’s the code to use for the cells:

• Headline: =(if(LEN(A2)>25,”Too Long”,25-LEN(A2)))
• Line1 & Line2:  =(if(LEN(B2)>35,”Too Long”,35-LEN(B2)))
• Display URL: =(if(LEN(D7)>30,”Too Long”,30-LEN(D7)))

And for all of the cells in columns E-H:

1. Click the format menu
2. Choose ‘Change colors with rules’
3. Pick ‘Text Contains’
4. Enter Too Long for the text
5. Choose red for the background and foreground

Now when you finish typing each field in your ads, you’ll see how many characters you have left to work with, and if you go over the limit columns E-H will turn red to warn you. You can see the spreadsheet on Google here:  http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pRRcohDxf89nwmZ0uurDhKw