How to Use ProOps Ads Tracker: Daily and Weekly Playbooks for Every Ad Ops Role
To use ProOps Ads Tracker, connect your Google Ad Manager network once through Ads Tracker HQ with a read-only connection you approve, install the Chrome extension, and let the briefing do the watching. Your briefing arrives every morning with yesterday's complete GAM delivery data, ranked red and orange across campaigns, revenue, and inventory, in a sidepanel beside Google Ad Manager. Coordinators work that short list each morning, managers use Ads Tracker HQ for the weekly review and team coverage, yield leads watch the revenue and inventory alerts, and the Excel exports answer sales and finance questions without a new report pull.
Most ad ops teams start a monitoring tool the same way: someone installs it, the alerts show up, and it slowly becomes one more tab. The teams that get the most out of ProOps Ads Tracker do something different. They decide who reads the briefing, when, and what happens next, and they build a weekly habit around keeping it sharp.
This guide is that playbook. It walks through each part of the platform and what it helps you do, then the daily and weekly rhythm, how five different roles use it, a plan for the first 30 days of the trial, and the habits that keep the briefing useful long after setup.
The parts of ProOps Ads Tracker
ProOps Ads Tracker is your team's daily coordinator for Google Ad Manager. GAM stays the system of record and the place where every fix happens. Ads Tracker does the daily check on top of it, so your team starts the day on what changed instead of hunting for it. Here is what each part is for.
The morning briefing, in a Chrome sidepanel beside GAM
This is where most of your team will spend their time. The ProOps Ads Tracker Chrome extension opens a sidepanel next to your Google Ad Manager session with the day's briefing: a short, prioritized list of what needs attention, flagged red for critical and orange for warning. It is ready before 8 AM local time, 7 days a week, whether anyone logs in or not. Each alert carries enough detail to decide what to do and links back to GAM so you can act on it.
What it helps you do: start the day with a ranked short list instead of a stack of reports, and spend your first minutes in GAM fixing, not searching.
Ads Tracker HQ, the command centre
Ads Tracker HQ is the web platform behind the extension. It gives you the network-wide view (revenue at risk, active alerts, and the campaigns, revenue, and inventory breakdown in one place), the self-managed filters and alert settings that shape what gets flagged, and team and account administration. If you manage more than one GAM network, HQ is where that comes together.
What it helps you do: see the whole network at a glance, make the briefing fit your business, and manage who on the team has access.
Three alert areas: campaigns, revenue, and inventory
Every briefing is organized into the same three areas:
Campaigns covers your direct-sold orders. It flags delivery and pacing problems, such as campaigns ending soon behind pace or not delivering at all, while there is still time to rebalance.
Revenue covers managed, programmatic, open auction, and Prebid revenue in one view. It flags revenue that dropped or stopped, so yield issues surface before they become a month-end surprise. Video inventory gets its own VAST-related alerts.
Inventory covers the health of your ad units themselves, independent of any campaign. It flags units that stop receiving requests, stop delivering, or slip on fill, which is often the first sign a release broke something.
What it helps you do: catch an under-delivery while it is still a quick fix rather than a make-good, and notice a revenue or ad unit problem the morning it starts.
Filters and alert settings
In Ads Tracker HQ you decide what the briefing should ignore and how sensitive it should be for your network. Most teams start by leaving out the things they never need flagged, such as house advertisers or specific partner IDs, and refine from there as they learn what "normal" looks like on their own inventory.
What it helps you do: keep the briefing signal, not noise, so the team keeps trusting it.
Troubleshoot Assistant (opt-in)
When a flagged alert needs a closer look, the opt-in Troubleshoot Assistant reviews the reporting behind that alert and suggests likely root causes with next steps. It is off unless you turn it on, it only looks at the data behind the alert you are investigating, and like the rest of the product it cannot change anything in GAM.
What it helps you do: get from "something is wrong" to "here is where to look first" faster, especially on the alerts that would otherwise turn into an afternoon of report pulls.
Excel exports for stakeholders
Alerts and reports can be downloaded as Excel files for distribution to sales, finance, or leadership.
What it helps you do: answer "how is delivery looking?" with a file you already have, instead of "give me a minute to pull a report."
Read-only by design
Under all of it is a read-only connection that you approve in your own GAM network. ProOps Ads Tracker can monitor everything and change nothing: no line item edits, no setting changes, no billing access. Your team keeps every decision and every click in GAM.
The daily rhythm: the morning briefing
The daily rhythm is short by design. The point of a coordinator is that the watching is already done when your team arrives, and only the judging is left.
Open the sidepanel first. Before you open a report or answer the overnight emails, open GAM with the sidepanel beside it. Your briefing arrives every morning with yesterday's complete GAM delivery data, so this is the most complete picture you will have of yesterday.
Work the reds. Critical alerts are the ones with the shortest window: a direct-sold campaign falling behind with days left, revenue that stopped, an ad unit that went dark. Use the link back to GAM, check the cause, and fix or escalate.
Read the oranges. Warnings are early signs. Some need action today, some need watching. Decide which, and note the ones to compare against tomorrow.
Use Troubleshoot Assistant where it saves time. If your team has turned it on, use it on the alerts that are not obvious at a glance.
Acknowledge or snooze what is handled. Clearing items keeps tomorrow's list honest, so the next person sees what is still open rather than what was already dealt with.
Share what others need. If sales or finance will ask about delivery today, send the Excel export now.
Then close the list and get on with the work that grows revenue: yield, new deals, trafficking quality, and the advertiser conversations that never seem to fit into a day of report pulls.
The weekly rhythm: review, tune, hand over
The daily rhythm catches problems. The weekly rhythm keeps the briefing sharp and makes sure coverage does not depend on one person.
Monday: start with the weekend. Campaigns deliver 7 days a week and so does the briefing. On Monday, begin with today's briefing and anything still open from the weekend before you dive into the new week.
Mid-week: one look at the network view in HQ. A manager or lead takes a few minutes in Ads Tracker HQ to see the network as a whole: what is red, what keeps coming back, and where revenue is at risk.
Tune filters and settings. If the same alert fires every week for something your team has already decided is fine, adjust it in HQ. If something slipped past that should have been flagged, tighten it. Small, regular tuning beats a big clean-up once a quarter.
Spot the patterns. A unit that under-fills every Monday, an advertiser whose flights start slow, a demand source that softens mid-month. A week of briefings makes these visible. Fix the cause, not the symptom.
Hand over the coordinator role. If your team rotates who works the morning list, the handover happens here: what is open, what is known and being left alone, and what to escalate. The briefing makes the handover concrete because everyone works from the same list.
Send the weekly view to stakeholders. A short note with the Excel export keeps sales and finance informed without extra meetings.
Once a month, review detection. Ask what slipped through, what fired that should not have, and what to tune. This is the habit that makes the briefing quieter and sharper over time.
How each role uses it
The same briefing serves different people in different ways. Here is how each role gets the most out of it.
Ad ops coordinator or trafficker: the morning triage
The coordinator owns the daily rhythm above. The goal is simple: by mid-morning, every red has been fixed or escalated and every orange has a decision.
Open the sidepanel before anything else in GAM.
Work the campaigns area first when direct-sold delivery is at stake, because those have the shortest window.
Use the links back to GAM to act, then acknowledge or snooze so the list reflects what is still open.
Keep a short running note of what recurs, so the weekly review starts with facts instead of memory.
The outcome: the person closest to the work starts the day fixing problems, not finding them.
Ad ops manager or director: weekly review and team coverage
The manager's job is less about individual alerts and more about the system around them.
Use the network view in Ads Tracker HQ for a weekly read of where the risk sits.
Own the filters and alert settings with the team, so the briefing matches how your business actually works.
Set up who works the morning list each week, and make sure a backup has access before anyone takes time off.
Manage seats in HQ: 3 users are included per network, and you can add more as the team grows.
The outcome: coverage that does not depend on who happens to be in, and a team that works from one shared view of the network instead of individual habits.
Yield or revenue lead: revenue and inventory health
The yield lead lives in the revenue and inventory areas.
Read revenue alerts each morning for drops or stops across managed, programmatic, open auction, and Prebid.
Watch inventory alerts for ad units that went quiet or slipped on fill, which often explain a revenue dip faster than a top-line report does.
Keep an eye on video inventory through the VAST-related alerts.
Use Troubleshoot Assistant on the alerts that need a root cause before you change anything.
Each week, look for repeat patterns and feed them into floor, partner, and packaging decisions.
The outcome: revenue problems noticed the morning they start, not at month-end reconciliation.
Sales or account manager: delivery questions from advertisers
Sales and account managers usually do not need to read every alert. They need fast, confident answers when an advertiser asks how a campaign is doing.
Ask ad ops for the Excel export before advertiser calls, or take one of the team's seats if you want to see the briefing yourself.
Pay attention to campaigns flagged as ending soon behind pace. That is the window where a quiet rebalance is still possible, before it becomes a make-good conversation.
Loop ad ops in early when an at-risk flight belongs to a key account.
The outcome: fewer surprises for advertisers, and delivery conversations that start with "we are already on it."
Small teams with one person covering everything
On a one-person team, there is no rotation and no hand-off. The briefing is the backup.
Read all three areas in one pass each morning. Fix the reds, park the oranges, move on.
Keep weekly tuning to one short HQ session so the list stays short.
Because the briefing runs 7 days a week, use it to cover weekends without logging in to pull reports.
Before time off, make sure a manager or colleague can see the same briefing, and leave a one-page note on what to escalate and what to leave alone.
The outcome: the routine monitoring still happens every day, even when you are the only one doing it.
Role by role: daily and weekly use
Use this table to agree who does what before your team starts.
Your first 30 days on the trial
The 30-day free trial runs on your own GAM network, with no credit card to start. Treat it as a test of the routine, not just the tool.
Week 1: connect and build the habit
Sign up at Ads Tracker HQ. Create your account at hq.proopsadstracker.com. If there are advertisers you never want flagged, such as house campaigns, you can leave them out from the start.
Connect your network. Add the read-only connection in your GAM network using the steps HQ gives you during onboarding. No code, no tag changes, no ad server configuration.
Install the Chrome extension from the Chrome Web Store, and have each teammate install it on their own browser.
Add a payment method by day 7. The trial is free, but the daily sync pauses on day 7 until a payment method is on file. Nothing is deleted, and it resumes when you add one.
Open the briefing every morning. From then on, your briefing arrives every morning with yesterday's complete GAM delivery data. Make reading it the first thing you do in GAM.
Week 2: check it against what you know
Cross-check a few flagged alerts against what you would have caught by hand. This is how the team learns to trust the list.
Start tuning. Leave out what never matters to you, and adjust anything that is consistently noisy.
If you are using Troubleshoot Assistant, try it on one alert that would normally take a long investigation.
Week 3: make it the team routine
Decide who works the morning list, and run your first weekly review in HQ.
Send an Excel export to one stakeholder in sales or finance who has been asking for more visibility, and see how they use it.
Note the patterns the team is starting to see that were hard to spot before.
Week 4: decide with your own data
List what the briefing caught that would otherwise have been found later, and what the team did about it.
Ask each user how their morning changed.
Decide whether to continue. If you do, the subscription simply carries on at USD $249 per month per GAM network, with 3 users included and extra users at USD $49 per month. Subscriptions are month-to-month, and you can cancel anytime.
Tips to get the most from it
Read before you report. The briefing is the start of the day, not a replacement for GAM. Read it first, then go into GAM with a plan.
Name an owner for the morning list. Shared responsibility for watching usually means nobody is watching. One named person per day or per week works better.
Tune little and often. A few minutes of filter and settings work each week keeps the list short and trusted. A noisy list is a list people stop reading.
Do not treat orange as noise. Warnings are where you get the most lead time. A quick decision now saves a bigger fix later.
Close the loop. Acknowledge or snooze what is handled so the next person, or tomorrow's you, sees only what is still open.
Share the exports. The fastest way to change how ad ops is seen inside a company is to answer sales and finance before they ask.
Plan coverage before time off. Make sure a backup can see the briefing and knows what to escalate.
Keep the fix in GAM. Ads Tracker is read-only on purpose. It tells you where to look. Your team still makes the call.
Get started
The best way to see how ProOps Ads Tracker fits your team is to run the routine on your own network. Start your 30-day free trial at Ads Tracker HQ: USD $249 per month per GAM network after the trial, 3 users included, extra users USD $49 per month, and no credit card to start.
If you want help designing the routine itself, from who owns the morning list to how your team hands over coverage, ProOps Consulting works with publisher ad ops teams on exactly that kind of process.
ProOps Ads Tracker is built by Chris Quinn, co-founder of ProOps Consulting, after 19+ years in ad operations.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I use ProOps Ads Tracker?
Connect your Google Ad Manager network once through Ads Tracker HQ with a read-only connection you approve, then install the Chrome extension. After that, your briefing arrives every morning with yesterday's complete GAM delivery data, ranked red and orange across campaigns, revenue, and inventory, in a sidepanel beside GAM. Work the short list each morning, use Ads Tracker HQ for the weekly review, and share the Excel exports with sales and finance.
What are the main parts of ProOps Ads Tracker?
There are two places you work. The Chrome extension is the morning briefing in a sidepanel next to Google Ad Manager. Ads Tracker HQ, at hq.proopsadstracker.com, is the web command centre with the network-wide view, alert filters and settings, and team administration. Around them sit the three alert areas (campaigns, revenue, and inventory), downloadable Excel exports, and the opt-in Troubleshoot Assistant for a closer look at a flagged alert.
Who on an ad ops team should use ProOps Ads Tracker?
Ad ops coordinators and traffickers use the morning briefing to triage the day. Ad ops managers and directors use Ads Tracker HQ for the weekly review and to keep coverage steady when people are out. Yield and revenue leads watch the revenue and inventory alerts. Sales and account managers get delivery answers from the briefing or the Excel export. On a one-person team, the same briefing covers all of it.
Does ProOps Ads Tracker change anything in Google Ad Manager?
No. ProOps Ads Tracker is read-only. You approve the connection in your own Google Ad Manager network, and it can read your campaigns, revenue, and inventory but can never edit a line item, change a setting, or touch billing. Every fix still happens in GAM, by your team.
How much does ProOps Ads Tracker cost, and how many users are included?
ProOps Ads Tracker costs USD $249 per month per Google Ad Manager network, month-to-month, with 3 users included. Extra users are USD $49 per month each. Every account starts with a 30-day free trial at hq.proopsadstracker.com with no credit card to start. Add a payment method by day 7 to keep the daily sync running.
What should I do in the first 30 days of the ProOps Ads Tracker trial?
In week one, connect your network, install the extension, add a payment method by day 7 so the daily sync keeps running, and open the briefing first thing every morning. In week two, cross-check what it flags against what you would have caught by hand and tune your filters. In week three, run it as the team routine and share an Excel export with a stakeholder. In week four, review what it caught and decide.
Does ProOps Ads Tracker work for a one-person ad ops team?
Yes. The briefing runs 7 days a week whether anyone logs in or not, so a solo ad ops lead starts each morning with a ranked short list instead of a blank report. The 3 included users also leave room for a manager or a backup to see the same briefing when you are out.