Testing Claude in Chrome 4: Diagnosing and Fixing a Google Ads Delivery Outage

Hi! I'm Rinako from Rimo llc., back with another Claude in Chrome experiment.

This time, I handed Claude a real operational problem: a Google Ads campaign that had completely stopped delivering, with no obvious reason why. I asked Claude to investigate the cause, then fix it—all within the Google Ads console. Here's how it went.

The Question: "Why Has the Ad Campaign Stopped Delivering Since 2/12?"

This started with a routine check on our international search ad campaigns. I noticed that the US_Translation_Multilingual campaign had zero delivery from February 12th onward. No impressions, no clicks—nothing.

At first glance, everything looked fine. The campaign status was "Enabled," the budget was set, and the targeting seemed correct. There was no obvious red flag.

To figure out what happened, I'd need to go through the change history in Google Ads, inspecting each modification one by one to find which change caused the outage. It's the kind of tedious detective work that can easily eat up an hour.

So I decided to let Claude in Chrome handle the entire investigation.

The Experiment: Having Claude Investigate and Fix the Delivery Issue

My instruction was just a single sentence:

"Investigate why the currently open US_Translation_Multilingual campaign hasn't been delivering since 2/12."

The browser was already open to the campaign page. I hit send and let Claude take it from there.

Step 1: Checking the Campaign Settings

Claude started by inspecting the campaign's basic settings—confirming the status was "Enabled," verifying there was no end date set, and checking that the targeting (US and Canada) and language settings (English) were all correct. This is exactly what a human would do first: rule out the obvious.

Step 2: Investigating the Change History — Finding the Root Cause

With no clear issue in the settings, Claude navigated to the change history page. This is where things got interesting.

The change history showed a cluster of modifications all made on February 11th. Claude expanded each change entry to read the details, methodically working through the list.

Here's what it found:

Ad schedules had been added: Only two time slots were configured—Monday 0:00–17:00 and Sunday 14:00–23:45—and both had a –90% bid adjustment applied.

The implication was clear: Tuesday through Saturday had no ad schedule entries at all, which in Google Ads means zero delivery on those days. Monday and Sunday technically had schedules, but the –90% bid adjustment meant ads were barely serving even during those windows. February 12th was a Wednesday—squarely in the dead zone.

What impressed me was that Claude mapped out this investigation on its own. I didn't tell it to check change history or look at ad schedules—it followed the trail from settings → change history → ad schedule and arrived at the root cause independently.

Step 3: Fixing the Schedule — Filling in the Gaps

With the cause identified, I gave my second instruction:

"I want normal delivery on the days that aren't currently scheduled. Set it up that way. Also apply the same settings to the US_Competitor campaign."

Claude opened the ad schedule editor and, importantly, left the existing two entries untouched (Monday 0:00–17:00 at –90% and Sunday 14:00–23:45 at –90%). It then added seven new schedule entries to fill every remaining gap: Monday 17:00–0:00, Tuesday through Saturday all day, and Sunday 0:00–14:00—all with no bid adjustment, meaning normal delivery.

The result: full 7-day coverage, with the original –90% windows preserved exactly as they were.

Step 4: Applying the Same Fix to a Second Campaign

I'd referred to the second campaign somewhat loosely as "US_Competitor," but that wasn't its exact name. Claude handled this gracefully—it opened the campaign selector, searched for "US," and correctly identified US_Competitive_Alternative as the matching campaign.

This campaign had the exact same problematic schedule configuration, so Claude repeated the same fix: added the same seven schedule entries, saved, and verified that all nine entries were in place with full weekly coverage.

The Result

Both campaigns now have nine schedule entries each, covering every hour of every day of the week. The existing –90% bid adjustments on Monday morning and Sunday afternoon were preserved, while all other time slots are set to normal delivery.

From start to finish, I gave exactly two instructions. Claude handled the rest—investigation, root cause analysis, and fixes across two campaigns—autonomously.

What Worked Well → Rating: ★★★★☆ (Very Good)

The biggest value was having Claude handle the full loop—from diagnosis to fix—with minimal hand-holding.

Three things stood out:

Independent root cause analysis. Claude navigated from campaign settings to change history to ad schedules on its own, correctly identifying that the combination of limited schedule entries and –90% bid adjustments was blocking delivery. It understood the non-obvious Google Ads behavior that "no schedule entry = no delivery," which even experienced advertisers sometimes overlook.

Respectful, non-destructive fixes. Rather than wiping the existing configuration and starting fresh, Claude chose to preserve the current –90% bid entries and only fill in the missing time slots. This was the right call—it respected the possibility that those entries were intentional while solving the delivery problem.

Fuzzy campaign name matching. When I said "US_Competitor," Claude figured out I meant "US_Competitive_Alternative" by searching and matching on its own, without asking me to clarify.

Why ★4 instead of ★5? The Google Ads schedule editor UI gave Claude some trouble. When selecting days from dropdown menus, it occasionally clicked the wrong day (e.g., selecting Friday instead of Saturday) and had to retry. This happened several times across both campaigns. But Claude always caught and corrected its own mistakes, and the final result was accurate, so the impact was cosmetic rather than functional.

Conclusion: Claude in Chrome as an Ad Ops Troubleshooting Partner

What this experiment showed me is that Claude in Chrome isn't just a tool for changing settings—it's a partner that can investigate problems, identify root causes, and execute fixes across your ad account.

In ad operations, "why did delivery suddenly stop?" and "why did CPA spike?" are everyday questions. Answering them requires bouncing between different parts of the Google Ads console, cross-referencing change history with current settings. Even for experienced practitioners, this takes time.

With Claude, I described the problem in one sentence and got a full diagnosis plus a fix applied to two campaigns. The potential for streamlining day-to-day ad operations work is significant.

See you in the next experiment!