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bidsmith

What is bidsmith?

bidsmith manages Google Ads campaigns as code. You write what your campaigns should look like in plain-text files, you keep those files in GitHub like any other shared document, and bidsmith makes Google Ads match.

If you’ve used Google Ads Editor to bulk-edit campaigns, bidsmith solves the same problem — but with full history, peer review, and an undo button that actually works.

The shape of a typical day

  1. You want to launch a new search campaign for the summer promo.
  2. You make a branch in GitHub, edit a .bid file in any text editor, describe the campaign, the ad group, the keywords, and the budget.
  3. You open a pull request. A teammate reviews the diff and approves.
  4. You run bidsmith plan — it tells you “I’m about to create 1 campaign, 1 ad group, 12 keywords, 1 budget. Continue?”
  5. You run bidsmith apply — bidsmith calls the Google Ads API and makes the changes.
  6. Two weeks later someone asks “who paused that campaign?” — you check the Git history and answer in five seconds.

What it is

  • A small command-line tool you run on your laptop.
  • A file format (.bid) that describes Google Ads campaigns, ad groups, keywords, conversion actions, and shared keyword lists.
  • A way to preview every change (plan) before it touches the live account (apply).
  • A way to pull your existing live campaigns down into .bid files (refresh), so you can adopt bidsmith without starting from scratch.

What it isn’t

  • Not a replacement for the Google Ads UI. Reporting, performance inspection, recommendations, search-term reviews — those still happen in Google Ads. bidsmith is for configuration, not analysis.
  • Not magic. bidsmith won’t optimize bids for you, suggest keywords, or write ad copy. It applies what you tell it to apply.
  • Not for the web. No SaaS dashboard, no login. The tool runs on your laptop or in your CI pipeline. Your account credentials never leave your machine.

The two-file mental model

Two artifacts matter:

  • Your .bid files — what you want your account to look like. Live in Git. Reviewable. Diffable. Reverting a change is a git revert.
  • The live Google Ads account — what is. bidsmith reads it via the Google Ads API.

bidsmith plan is the comparison: “here’s the diff between what you want and what’s live.” bidsmith apply is the reconciliation: “make the live account match the files.”

That’s the whole product.

Ready?