How to connect Google Ads to Looker Studio (Google Data Studio)

Google Ads is an important hub for orchestrating your ad campaigns, tracking the most crucial metrics, and, ultimately, driving your business forward. As the complexity of your ad strategy increases, so does the importance of analyzing your ad data. Visualizing Google Ads metrics in Looker Studio can help you better understand the main correlations, identify opportunities for improvements, optimize your ad budget, and more. If you also connect other ad apps to Looker Studio, you can create insightful cross-channel reports and live dashboards that will give you a detailed overview of all your campaigns. This is a convenient way to track performance, analyze metrics across different channels, and share main insights with clients and colleagues without giving them access to the data source accounts.

In this article, we provide you with step-by-step instructions for connecting Google Ads to Looker Studio with different methods.

Linking Google Ads to Looker Studio – what are the options?

There are a couple of ways to connect Google Ads to Looker Studio. The first and most obvious method is to use native integration. It’s simple, reliable, and hassle-free. However, it has limited scheduling options, and, in general, the functionality is very basic – it just connects the two apps and transfers data. In many cases, this could be enough. 

But if you want to connect other ad or marketing apps as well, calculate custom metrics, or analyze your data before transferring it to Looker Studio, then it might be more feasible to connect Google Ads to Looker Studio with the help of third-party solutions. In this case, you can receive much broader functionality and make working with your ad data significantly easier and more efficient. For example, we can recommend using Coupler.io – a reliable data analytics and data automation platform. It allows you to use a single solution to automatically collect your ad data across multiple apps, blend it into a single dataset, schedule regular updates, and then transfer clean and analysis-ready data to Looker Studio. 

Using a third-party solution to connect Google Ads to Looker Studio is arguably the best and most efficient method, so we’ll start with this option. And then we will provide step-by-step instructions for the default method in one of the next sections.

How to connect data from Google Ads to Looker Studio with a third-party solution 

Opting for external solutions to link the two apps is a great way to benefit from the expanded set of features and get more flexibility. This can also help you work with your data in a simpler and more efficient way.

Why use a third-party solution?

• Combining data from multiple sources – if you connect several apps to Looker Studio, it will get slow, and performance will be significantly impacted. But if you use another solution to connect various data sources to Looker Studio, this problem won’t emerge. In addition to this, with a third-party solution, you even can blend your data smoothly into one dataset for cross-channel analysis.

• Data transformation –  when you need to calculate custom metrics or perform other manipulations with your data, the situation is similar. Looker Studio gets slow if you add calculated columns on its side. However, if you use a solution with the ETL functionality, you can perform all the calculations, sorting, filtering, and more before transferring your data to Looker Studio. In this case, you will get a well-performing dashboard ready for interactive presentation or analysis.

• Automated templates – you can use a pre-set Google Ads template to create a dashboard literally in minutes. You only need to connect your Google Ads and Looker Studio account – all the data will be extracted and visualized automatically. As a result, you will get an automated self-updating dashboard.

• Streamlining your data flows – in general, using one tool to manage all your data across dozens of apps is a great way to optimize your data flows, boost efficiency, and lay the foundation for data-driven decisions. A comprehensive data integration solution can help you collect, transform, and analyze your data, as well as act on it.

How to set up an automated integration to link Google Ads to Looker Studio

In this example, we will show you how to connect Google Ads to Looker Studio with the help of Coupler.io, a popular data analytics and data automation platform that helps marketers make the most of their data. It offers you all the benefits mentioned in the section above and even more. 

With Coupler.io, you can extract data from 70+ business apps and load it automatically on a schedule to Looker Studio, Google Sheets, Excel, and BigQuery. Among the available data sources, you can find such apps as Google Ads, Mailchimp, GA4, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube, Pipedrive, Hubspot, Salesforce, and many others.

Coupler.io allows you to connect Google Ads to Looker Studio with direct integration. Here’s how to do this:

• Sign up for Coupler.io and click Add new importer on the Importers tab.
• Select Google Ads as a data source and Looker Studio as a destination.

• Connect your Google Ads account and grant the requested permissions.
• Select the data entity you need to export.

• In the next step, you will need to provide your Google Ads Customer ID. To find it, go to your Google Ads account and find the numbers in the upper right corner. If you have several sub-accounts connected to your main account, press on your profile picture to see the list of all sub-accounts. Pick the one you need and copy the 7-digit Customer ID.

• Then, paste the ID into the corresponding field in the importer settings and click Continue.

• When everything is ready, you can connect more data sources if you wish to build a cross-channel dashboard. Alternatively, you can add other Google Ads accounts if you have several. Just click the Add one more source button and repeat the same steps that we’ve described above for connecting Google Ads. You can connect as many apps as you need. Once you have connected all your data sources (or just one source), you can switch to the Transform module.

Here’s what it looks like. You can see data fetched from your sources, as well as preview the result of transforming it. Coupler.io allows you to check and manipulate your data before loading it to Looker Studio. In particular, in the Transform module, you can:

• Preview and blend data – see if everything loads correctly before actually exporting the data. If you need to combine datasets from several sources, you can check if your data blends smoothly and make the necessary adjustments.
• Manage columns – hide the columns you don’t want to export, add new columns, rename and reorder them, change their type, and merge information from several columns into one.
• Sort and filter data – use various filters to extract only the data you need based on a set of criteria, as well as sort your data. 
• Perform calculations – you can calculate new metrics based on your data directly within Coupler.io’s interface. All you need to do is to add a new column and provide a formula for the calculations.

This powerful ETL functionality allows you to easily manipulate your data and prepare it for visualization. As a result, you can transfer to Looker Studio, a clean and analysis-ready dataset. This is very convenient because Looker Studio gets slow and doesn’t work well if you try doing this on its side. Connecting multiple data sources directly to Looker Studio, as well as adding calculated columns, significantly impairs performance. Doing all this on Coupler.io’s side, you eliminate this problem.

• Now, let’s connect your Looker Studio account. Follow the instructions in the importer to set up the connection. 

• The first step is to create an API token. Press the Generate button on the right to get a new token and copy it once the token appears. Then, move to the second step and press the Looker Studio button.

• Complete steps three and four as described in the importer’s instructions: Authorize access for Looker Studio and insert the API token you generated before into the corresponding field.

• Then, click Connect in the upper right corner. Your importer will be connected to Looker Studio.

• After this, come back to Coupler.io to finish the setup. You can provide some additional optional settings for the destination and set a schedule for refreshing your data. Coupler.io will automatically pull the latest information from your data sources according to the specified schedule and send it to Looker Studio. As a result, you will get an automated self-updating dashboard. 

• Once everything is ready, click Save and Run. Check your data in Looker Studio and press the Create report button to start building your dashboard.

Now you know how to connect data from Google Ads to Looker Studio automatically. In the next section, we explain how you can visualize this data. 

How to link Google Ads to Looker Studio with a native connector

• Log in to your Looker Studio account and navigate to the menu on the left. 
• Click Create and select Data source.

• In the next step, you will see the list of suggested native connectors. Click on the Google Ads tile.

• Next, select the Account and Report you want to export data from. Then, press Connect.

• Once this is done, you can preview the fields and the types automatically assigned to them. If some of the types are incorrect, you can press the arrow on the right and select another type manually.
• Additionally, you can check other settings in the menu on the top, such as community access and field editing. 
• As for the data freshness settings, the update interval is automatically set to 12 hours.
• When everything is correct, press the Create report button in the upper right corner.

• That’s it! You’ve successfully connected Google Ads to Looker Studio, so now you can start visualizing your data.

Using the native connector is a rather simple and straightforward way to link the two apps. However, if you want to build a comprehensive cross-channel dashboard that will be updated automatically, it’s better to do so with the help of third-party solutions. We will give you a detailed example of this method in the next section.

How to build a Google Ads dashboard in Looker Studio

There are several approaches to building a dashboard: You can do it yourself from scratch, you can use a template, or you can hire data professionals to do it for you. Let’s briefly explore each of these methods.

DIY: Building a dashboard manually

Creating a dashboard from scratch is a good option if you need significant customization and also have experience in working with Looker Studio – or have the desire to gain such an experience.

If you need tips on how to visualize your data step by step, check our Looker Studio Tutorial: Dashboard for Beginners article. In that blog post, we’ve already covered the basics you will need to create your first dashboard – preparing dashboard layout, adding scorecards, building graphs, etc. 

Using an automated template

A much faster way is to use a Google Ads Looker Studio template. This is a very efficient option, especially when you don’t have much time on your hands and only need little to moderate customization.

For example, you can use this Google Ads dashboard template prepared by our team. It consists of three different tabs: Overview, Campaigns, and Performance by the month and the days of the week. Check the interactive version in Looker Studio to see how it works.

This dashboard is fully automated and integrated with Coupler.io. This means that you don’t even need to go through the settings – once you connect your Google Ads and Looker Studio accounts, the pre-configured importer will automatically pull the needed Google Ads data and visualize it, creating your own copy of this dashboard. As a result, you can have an analysis-ready self-updating dashboard literally in minutes.

Check the Readme tab to learn how to use this template.

Hiring professionals to build data visualization

However, in some cases, you might need to create advanced visualizations bringing together huge datasets from multiple sources. Such pro-level dashboards can be important tools for data analysis, ongoing monitoring, and enabling informed decisions. Building such analytical tools requires data analytics expertise. If your organization doesn’t have such professionals in-house, hiring experts can be a viable option. 

Below, you can see an example of a visualization created by Coupler.io’s data analytics team. It’s a comprehensive cross-channel dashboard combining data from Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and Facebook Ads. View the interactive version of this PPC dashboard in Looker Studio.

If you need help with visualizing your data or automating your data flows, you can request our data analytics services and receive assistance with any data-related challenges.

Now that we’ve explored various ways to create a Google Ads dashboard, let’s take a look at the key metrics to include in your visualized report.

What are the most important Google Ads KPIs to track in Looker Studio?

When you connect data from Google Ads to Looker Studio, you should decide what data exactly you need. Here are some of the most important metrics to keep track of.

For more details, see our article on Google Ads metrics.

What is the best way to connect Google Ads to Looker Studio?

In this article, we’ve explored different methods that allow you to connect Google Ads to Looker Studio. If you mostly want to visualize just one data source (Google Ads) and don’t need to perform any complex calculations, you can use native integration – it’s free and easy to use. 

However, if you want to have an all-in-one solution to automate your data flows, bring all your ad and marketing data to one place, as well as give you more flexibility for custom calculations – in this case, it’s better to opt for a third-party solution. For example, you can connect Google Ads to Looker Studio automatically using Coupler.io. This allows you to easily connect multiple data sources, blend several datasets into one, transform your data in various ways and visualize it in minutes with readily available automated templates.

Streamline your data analytics & reporting with Coupler.io!

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