Why Google Ads suits short questions
Most Google Ads management is not a big weekly redesign. It is noticing, early, that something changed: a broad match keyword picked up irrelevant queries, a budget cap is cutting the afternoon off, a competitor moved in and your top-of-page rate fell. Each of those is a one-line question with a short answer, and the sooner you ask it the less it costs.
Instinct answers from live Google Ads data through MCP Ads rather than from a report someone exported last week. You can also ask it to keep an eye on a campaign and text you when a number slips, which turns a habit you forget into an alert you get.
Connect it in a minute
Connect Google Ads in the MCP Ads dashboard at /manage with your Google sign-in. If you use a manager (MCC) account, its client accounts are listed too, so you can name the account you mean in a text.
Then create an API key under Connect MCP, then API keys, copy it (it is shown once), and text Instinct:
Connect MCP Ads for me. It is a remote MCP server: URL https://mcp-ads.com/mcp-slim, auth header Authorization: Bearer <paste your mcp_live_ key>. Keep it connected and use it for any question about my ads, analytics or SEO.
Use one key per agent, so you can revoke Instinct's key on its own at any time. The Instinct page and the quickstart cover the same steps.
What it can read
The Google Ads tools in MCP Ads cover the reports you would otherwise click through. The ones that matter most by text are listed here; the Google Ads docs page has the rest.
| Question | What it looks at |
|---|---|
| How much did we spend and convert? | Account overview and day-by-day trend: spend, clicks, conversions, CTR, CPC, ROAS |
| Which campaigns are over budget? | Budget pacing: daily budget, spend so far and percentage used |
| What are people actually searching? | Search terms report: the queries that triggered your ads |
| Why did impressions drop? | Auction insights: impression share, and share lost to budget vs rank |
| Who changed what? | Change history: what changed, when and by whom |
| Which keywords are weak? | Keyword performance and quality scores with their three components |
Things to text
Short, specific questions work best. Name the account if you run several, and give a date range when it matters.
- "What did we spend yesterday, and is any campaign already over 80% of today's budget?"
- "Which search terms spent money in the last 30 days with no conversions? Suggest negatives for me to approve."
- "Is Brand Search losing impression share to budget or to rank this week?"
- "Who changed anything in the account since Monday?"
- "List keywords with a quality score of 4 or less and which component is below average."
- "Compare cost per conversion for the last 7 days against the 7 days before, ending three days ago."
- "Text me if the Leads campaign spends over its daily budget or gets no conversions for two days."
What a good answer looks like
An illustrative exchange, with made-up numbers: you ask why leads dropped, and Instinct replies that Search - Services had 22% lost impression share to budget on three of the last five days, that it hit its cap around 2pm on each of them, and that cost per conversion was unchanged. That points to budget, not to the ads. It then offers a budget change for you to approve.
Two Google Ads habits keep answers honest. First, conversion lag: conversions are often recorded days after the click, so the last two or three days look worse than they are. Ask for comparisons that end a few days ago. Second, Google can spend more than the daily budget on a given day and balances it over the month, so one high day is not always overspend. Pacing across the month is the better question.
What it will not do without you
Instinct can prepare changes: adding campaign-level negative keywords or a shared negative list, pausing or enabling a campaign, ad group, keyword or ad, changing a daily budget, adjusting a keyword bid, or setting a target CPA or target ROAS. Budgets, statuses and new campaigns go through MCP Ads' approval and workspace controls, so they go live when you approve them, not when a text is misread.
New campaigns are created paused by default, so a campaign built from your phone cannot start spending before you review it. MCP Ads also has a pause-everything tool for emergencies; it is a write like any other and needs the same approval. Viewer seats in a workspace cannot make changes at all.
The honest limits
Text is a poor medium for building a whole Search campaign with ad groups, dozens of keywords and responsive search ads. MCP Ads can create those, but reviewing fifteen headlines on a phone is hard. Use Instinct to draft and check, and review large builds in Google Ads or a desktop assistant.
Quality score and recommendations come from Google and follow Google's logic; applying a recommendation blindly is rarely a good idea. And answers are only as good as your conversion tracking. If that is shaky, fix it first; the conversion tracking guide is a good start. MCP Ads comes with a free trial, then $49/month flat (pricing).
