# Ads Control

> One dashboard for every ad account and platform. A rules engine watches spend, CPC, and CTR around the clock, and pauses or paces campaigns before they overspend.

Ads Control runs an hourly engine across your ad accounts, applying kill rules and budget ramps automatically, and gives you one dashboard to see every app, platform, and dollar in one place.

- Website: https://adscontrol.theportlandcompany.com/
- Get it: https://ads.theportlandcompany.com
- Availability: Free. Sign in with a magic link.
- Price: Free
- Platform: Web
- Made by: Spencer Hill, The Portland Company (https://theportlandcompany.com)
- Privacy: https://theportlandcompany.com/privacy

## What you get

- **Automatic kill rules**: An hourly engine checks daily spend, cost per click, and click-through rate against thresholds you set, and pauses a campaign the moment it crosses one.
- **One dashboard, every platform**: See spend, budget caps, and KPIs across every app and every connected ad platform in a single overview, with a shared monthly spend pool across apps.
- **Budget ramp and performance split**: New campaigns step their daily budget up gradually, and spend can shift between platforms automatically based on which one is performing.
- **Full decision log**: Every pause, budget change, and shift the engine makes is logged with the numbers it saw and the reasoning behind it, so nothing is a mystery.
- **Roles and access, per app**: Organizations, roles, and per-app grants control who can view numbers, run dry tests, or make live changes — a guest can be scoped to exactly one app.
- **Agent-ready**: An MCP server exposes the same reads and writes as the dashboard, so an AI agent can check performance or adjust rules, with every change requiring a human-readable reason.

## How it works

1. **Register a campaign**: Connect a platform and register a campaign under an app. Ads Control starts tracking its spend, clicks, and impressions right away.
2. **Set the rules**: Define spend caps, kill thresholds, and ramp schedules — or preview a change against current data before saving it, so you know what it would do first.
3. **The engine runs every hour**: It evaluates every managed campaign against the rules, pauses what needs pausing, adjusts budgets, and logs every decision with its reasoning.

## FAQ

### What ad platforms does it support?

X (Twitter) Ads and Apple Search Ads today, through adapters built for each platform's API.

### Can it spend money without me watching it?

The engine can run live, but every write is bound by the rules you set and every action is logged with a reason. You can also run it in dry-run mode, which decides and logs but changes nothing.

### What happens when a campaign gets paused?

It's logged with the exact numbers and rule that triggered it. A campaign the engine paused stays paused until a person resumes it — the engine won't undo its own decision.

### What's an 'observed' campaign?

A campaign marked observed is tracked for reporting only. The engine and dashboard will not pause it or change its budget.

### Who can see what?

Access is scoped by organization role and, optionally, per-app grants. A guest with a grant on one app sees only that app; an owner sees everything and manages who else can.

### Can an AI agent use it?

Yes. An MCP server exposes the same overview, campaign, and rules data as the dashboard, plus the ability to preview and save rule changes, each with a required reason.

## More from The Portland Company

https://theportlandcompany.com/apps