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Turn many cloned campaigns into one template

You have a folder full of campaigns that are basically the same. Maybe eight “Singapore” variants, six “India” ones, a handful of remarketing clones — each file 50-something lines, and the only real difference between siblings is a name, a UTM tag, and one targeting line. Every other change was just the rename copied through.

That’s a lot of files to keep in sync. Change the ad copy once and you get to paste it into all eight. for_each collapses the whole set into one template plus a table of what varies.

The shape

Pull the campaign into a template file with a variable for each thing that changes between siblings:

templates/preroll-campaign.bid
variable "campaign_name" { type = string }
variable "final_url"     { type = string }
variable "geo"           { type = string }


resource "google_ads_campaign_budget" "budget" {
  name          = var.campaign_name
  amount_micros = 5000000
}


resource "google_ads_campaign" "search" {
  name                     = var.campaign_name
  advertising_channel_type = "SEARCH"
  campaign_budget          = google_ads_campaign_budget.budget.id
  # ...ad group, ad, criteria...
}


resource "google_ads_campaign_criterion" "geo" {
  campaign = google_ads_campaign.search.id
  location {
    geo_target_constant = var.geo
  }
}

Then list the variants in one module block:

main.bid
module "ghostery_search" {
  source = "./templates/preroll-campaign.bid"


  geo = "geoTargetConstants/2840"   # shared: every variant targets the same place


  for_each = {
    privacy  = {
      campaign_name = "Ghostery — Privacy"
      final_url     = "https://www.ghostery.com/?utm_campaign=search_privacy"
    }
    adblock  = {
      campaign_name = "Ghostery — Ad Blocker"
      final_url     = "https://www.ghostery.com/?utm_campaign=search_adblock"
    }
    trackers = {
      campaign_name = "Ghostery — Anti-Tracking"
      final_url     = "https://www.ghostery.com/?utm_campaign=search_trackers"
    }
  }
}

bidsmith plan now shows three full campaigns — one per row in the table. Eight files become one template and an eight-row map; the ad copy lives in exactly one place.

How the table works

  • Each key is a variant. privacy, adblock, trackers — the key shows up in the plan as ghostery_search.privacy.…, so you can tell the instances apart.
  • Each value fills in that variant’s blanks. The fields match the template’s variable names.
  • Put shared values on the block. geo sits outside the table because all three campaigns share it. Anything that’s the same for every variant goes there; only the differences go in the rows.

Is this safe on a live account?

Yes. Converting hand-cloned files into a for_each template doesn’t recreate anything in Google Ads. bidsmith matches your live campaigns by their content — the campaign name, the keywords, the geo — not by where they live in your files. As long as each variant still produces the same campaign name and settings it had before, plan reports no changes and your performance history, learning, and ad reviews stay put.

The safe way to migrate:

  1. Build the template + for_each so each row reproduces an existing campaign exactly.
  2. Run bidsmith plan. You want 0 to create, 0 to update.
  3. Delete the old copy-pasted files in the same commit.

If plan wants to create or change something, a value in the table doesn’t match the live campaign yet — fix the row until the plan is clean.

See also