Connect Codex to Ad Platforms | Adspirer

Autonomous ad campaign management. Your AI agent runs campaigns while you sleep.

What Makes Codex Different

Most AI tools are assistants. They answer questions. They generate copy. They analyze data when you ask. Codex is autonomous. You define the goal — “check my ad performance every morning and flag anything unusual” — and the agent runs that task on a schedule. No human in the loop. It wakes up, pulls your campaign data, analyzes it, and sends you a summary. If your cost-per-acquisition spikes 40% overnight, you get an alert before you’ve had coffee. When you connect Codex to Adspirer, you get 190+ advertising tools that run on a schedule. It’s an AI ad manager that operates 24/7.

Prerequisites

OpenAI Codex CLI installed and working
git installed (used by the installer)
An Adspirer account (free to start)
At least one ad platform account: Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, or TikTok Ads

Setup

Plugin Marketplace (Recommended)
Shell Installer
Manual Setup

Important: The /plugins command below is a slash command — type it directly into the Codex input. Do not ask the AI to run it for you.

Open Codex

Launch a Codex session in your terminal:

codex

Add the Adspirer Marketplace

You have two options:Option A — type this directly in the Codex prompt:

codex plugin marketplace add amekala/ads-mcp

Codex runs the command and confirms: “Added the marketplace adspirer-marketplace from amekala/ads-mcp.”Option B — use the plugin browser: type /plugins → navigate to the Add Marketplace tab → enter amekala/ads-mcp.

Find and Install Adspirer Ads Agent

Type /plugins to open the plugin browser. Navigate to the Adspirer tab using the </> keys — you’ll see Adspirer Ads Agent listed as Available.Press Enter to open the plugin detail view. You’ll see the 5 skills, MCP server (adspirer), and an Install plugin option.Select Install plugin.

Authorize with Adspirer

A browser window opens with the Adspirer OAuth 2.1 screen. Sign in to your Adspirer account and click Authorize to grant Codex access.Return to your terminal — you’ll see “Installed Adspirer Ads Agent plugin.” The plugin now appears as Installed in /plugins.

Set Up Your Brand Workspace

Open your brand folder and start a new Codex session:

cd ~/Clients/YourBrand
codex

Say “set up my brand workspace”. The agent connects to your ad accounts, scans for brand docs, pulls live campaign data, and creates AGENTS.md. If it doesn’t trigger automatically, type: $adspirer-setup

Try It Now

Sign up for Adspirer — free to start

15 free tool calls/month. No credit card required. Connect your ad accounts in 2 minutes.

Run the Installer

bash <(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/amekala/ads-mcp/main/plugins/codex/adspirer/install.sh)

This installs all 5 skills, the agent config, MCP server, and multi-agent support automatically.

Restart Codex

Close and reopen Codex to load the new config.

Authenticate with Adspirer

codex mcp login adspirer

A browser window will open. Sign in with your Adspirer account and authorize access. Return to your terminal when complete.

Set Up Your Brand Workspace

Open your brand folder and launch Codex:

cd ~/Clients/YourBrand
codex

Say “set up my brand workspace”. The agent will connect to your ad accounts, scan for brand docs, pull live campaign data, and create AGENTS.md. If it doesn’t trigger automatically, run: $adspirer-setup

Clone the Repo

git clone https://github.com/amekala/ads-mcp.git /tmp/ads-mcp
cd /tmp/ads-mcp/plugins/codex/adspirer

Install Skills

mkdir -p ~/.agents/skills
cp -r skills/adspirer-ads ~/.agents/skills/
cp -r skills/adspirer-setup ~/.agents/skills/
cp -r skills/adspirer-performance-review ~/.agents/skills/
cp -r skills/adspirer-write-ad-copy ~/.agents/skills/
cp -r skills/adspirer-wasted-spend ~/.agents/skills/

Add the MCP Server

codex mcp add adspirer --url https://mcp.adspirer.com/mcp

Install Agent Config

mkdir -p ~/.codex/agents
cp agents/performance-marketing-agent.toml ~/.codex/agents/

Update config.toml

Add to ~/.codex/config.toml:

[features]
multi_agent = true

[agents.performance-marketing-agent]
description = "Brand-specific performance marketing agent. Use for ad campaigns, performance, keywords, ad copy, budgets."
config_file = "agents/performance-marketing-agent.toml"

Restart and Authenticate

Restart Codex, then authenticate:

codex mcp login adspirer

A browser window will open. Sign in and authorize access.

You’re connected. Codex now has 190+ advertising tools available for autonomous and interactive use.

Available Skills

Skill	Invocation	What it Does
Adspirer Ads	`$adspirer-ads` or just ask naturally	Full campaign management — 190+ tools, all workflows, all platforms
Setup	`$adspirer-setup`	Bootstrap a brand workspace (first-time or refresh)
Performance Review	`$adspirer-performance-review`	Cross-platform performance scorecard
Write Ad Copy	`$adspirer-write-ad-copy Google Search`	Brand-voice ad copy from real data
Wasted Spend	`$adspirer-wasted-spend`	Find and fix wasted ad spend

You don’t need to remember skill names — just describe what you want and Codex will match the right skill automatically.

What You Can Do

190+ tools across 4 ad platforms, available for autonomous or on-demand tasks:

Platform	Tools	Key Capabilities
Google Ads	39	Keyword research, Search & PMax campaigns, wasted spend detection, budget reallocation, search term analysis
LinkedIn Ads	28	B2B targeting (job titles, industries, company size), sponsored content, lead gen forms, performance analysis
Meta Ads	20	Image/video/carousel campaigns, creative fatigue detection, audience targeting, placement optimization
TikTok Ads	4	In-feed campaigns, asset validation, performance tracking

Autonomous Workflows (The Real Use Case)

Here’s why people use Codex with Adspirer:

Daily Performance Check-In

Agent YAML default_prompt:

"Pull yesterday's performance across all my ad platforms.
Compare to the previous 7-day average.
Flag any campaigns with CPA increases over 30% or spend increases over 50%.
Send me a summary."

Schedule this to run every morning at 8am. You wake up to a performance summary in your inbox or Slack. No dashboards to check.

Weekly Wasted Spend Audit

Agent YAML default_prompt:

"Audit my Google Ads account for wasted spend in the last 7 days.
Find keywords with spend but zero conversions.
For each keyword, recommend: pause it, add a negative keyword, or lower the bid.
Total up potential monthly savings."

Run this every Monday. The agent finds money leaks and tells you exactly what to fix.

Budget Rebalancing

Agent YAML default_prompt:

"Analyze performance across Google and Meta Ads for the last 30 days.
I have $10,000/month total budget.
Recommend how to split the budget for maximum conversions.
Show me current allocation vs recommended allocation."

Run this monthly. The agent analyzes cross-platform ROI and recommends where to shift spend.

Anomaly Detection

Agent YAML default_prompt:

"Check all active campaigns across Google, Meta, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
Look for anomalies in the last 24 hours:
- Sudden CPA spikes
- Campaigns that stopped converting
- Unexpected spend increases
Alert me immediately if anything is found."

Run this every 6 hours. The agent acts as a 24/7 monitoring system. If something breaks at 3am, you get an alert.

On-Demand Prompts (Non-Autonomous)

You can also run Codex with one-off prompts instead of the default task:

Campaign Creation

codex run adspirer-ads "Create a Google PMax campaign for my DTC brand:
- Product: premium wireless earbuds, $129 retail price
- Target ROAS: 350%
- I have product images and videos ready
- Write asset group headlines and descriptions
- Use my Google Merchant Center feed"

LinkedIn Lead Gen

codex run adspirer-ads "Launch a LinkedIn campaign targeting CTOs:
- Company size: 100-1,000 employees
- Industries: fintech, SaaS, cybersecurity
- Product: zero-trust security platform
- Budget: $150/day
- Goal: whitepaper downloads
- Image URL: [paste URL]"

Cross-Platform Report

codex run adspirer-ads "Generate a Q1 2026 performance report.
Pull data from Google Ads, Meta Ads, and LinkedIn Ads.
Include: total spend, conversions, ROAS by platform.
Format as markdown."

Safety Features (Critical for Autonomous Agents)

When an AI agent runs without human oversight, safety matters. Adspirer enforces these rules:

All campaigns created PAUSED: Even in autonomous mode, campaigns don’t launch until you manually approve them
No budget changes without confirmation: The agent can analyze and recommend budget changes, but it can’t execute them autonomously
Read-before-write workflows: Skills force research and validation before any campaign creation
Connection status checks: Agent verifies it’s managing the correct account before taking any action
No automatic retries: If a tool call fails, the agent reports the error instead of retrying blindly

Bottom line: Autonomous doesn’t mean uncontrolled. The agent analyzes, recommends, and alerts — but you make the final spending decisions.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
MCP server not found	Run `codex plugin marketplace add amekala/ads-mcp`, then `/plugins` to install. Or: `codex mcp add adspirer --url https://mcp.adspirer.com/mcp`
MCP shows “Unsupported”	Run `codex mcp login adspirer` to complete OAuth authentication
Authentication failed	Run `codex mcp login adspirer` to re-authenticate
Install appears to hang	A browser window may have opened for OAuth — complete sign-in and return to terminal
No ad platforms connected	Connect platforms at adspirer.com
Skills not showing	Verify: `ls ~/.agents/skills/` — should show `adspirer-*` directories
No data returned	Check for active campaigns. Try longer lookback (60/90 days)
Rate limit hit	Check Adspirer tier (Free: 15/mo, Plus: 150, Pro: 600, Max: 3,000)

FAQ

Can the agent actually spend money autonomously?

No. All campaigns are created PAUSED, and budget changes require user confirmation. The agent can analyze, recommend, and alert — but you approve spending decisions manually.

What's the difference between Codex and Claude Code?

Claude Code is interactive — you ask it to do something, it does it. Codex is autonomous — you define a task once, and it runs on a schedule. Use Claude Code for ad-hoc analysis. Use Codex for recurring tasks like daily performance checks.

How do I change the agent's default task?

Edit the default_prompt in ~/.codex/agents/performance-marketing-agent.toml. Restart the agent for changes to take effect.

Can I run multiple agents for different ad accounts?

Yes. Create separate agent config files with different default prompts. Each agent can specify which Adspirer account to use via the switch_primary_account tool.

How much does this cost?

Adspirer pricing is based on tool calls. Free tier: 15 calls/month. Plus:

49/mo for 150 calls. Pro:

99/mo for 600 calls. Max: $199/mo for 3,000 calls. Autonomous agents typically use 2-5 tool calls per run. See full pricing details.

Documentation Index

​What Makes Codex Different

​Prerequisites

​Setup

Sign up for Adspirer — free to start

​Available Skills

​What You Can Do

​Autonomous Workflows (The Real Use Case)

​Daily Performance Check-In

​Weekly Wasted Spend Audit

​Budget Rebalancing

​Anomaly Detection

​On-Demand Prompts (Non-Autonomous)

​Campaign Creation

​LinkedIn Lead Gen

​Cross-Platform Report

​Safety Features (Critical for Autonomous Agents)

​Troubleshooting

​FAQ

​Related Documentation

What Makes Codex Different

Prerequisites

Setup

Available Skills

What You Can Do

Autonomous Workflows (The Real Use Case)

Daily Performance Check-In

Weekly Wasted Spend Audit

Budget Rebalancing

Anomaly Detection

On-Demand Prompts (Non-Autonomous)

Campaign Creation

LinkedIn Lead Gen

Cross-Platform Report

Safety Features (Critical for Autonomous Agents)

Troubleshooting

FAQ

Related Documentation