A Google Ads ad account is the account where you pay for and manage ads in Google Search, on YouTube and on websites in the Google Display Network. Once you connect it to your customer account, gas starts downloading the performance of its campaigns and shows it in the Google Ads section, in campaigns and in reports.
Connecting takes two steps that follow one after the other. First you link your Google account once, which means you sign in to Google and allow gas to read data. Only then do you pick, from that link, the specific ad accounts to connect to the customer account. This article covers the second step.
Before you start
Get these things ready, without them the connection will not work.
- A linked Google account. If you do not have one yet, start with the article "Linking your Google account". You link the account once and it applies to all Google services.
- The Google Ads service allowed. When you sign in to Google, Google shows a screen with checkboxes where you choose what you let gas access. If you do not tick the box for Google Ads, the Google Ads tab will not appear for the link at all.
- Access to the ad account on the Google Ads side. Your Google account has to be listed in Google Ads as a user of the ad account you want to connect. Google Ads has five access levels: Admin, Standard, Read only, Email only and Billing. Read only is more than enough for downloading data into gas, because this level and both higher ones may view and run campaign performance reports. With Email only or Billing the connection will fail, those levels cannot reach performance reports. Only a user with the Admin level in that ad account can grant access, gas cannot do it for you.
- The Administrator or User role in the customer account. The Viewer role is not enough for connecting profiles.
- Google Ads in your plan. This is a paid part of gas. If the customer account does not have it, the section will not appear in the menu and you will not be able to select such a customer account while connecting.
What a manager (MCC) account is. Agencies and larger companies often have one umbrella account above their ad accounts that is used to manage the other accounts. In Google Ads it is called a manager account, MCC for short. It contains no campaigns of its own, it only groups the other accounts together.
A manager account does not run any campaigns itself. Campaigns, ad groups and individual ads always belong to the account below it where they actually run, and that is also where all the performance figures are created. So there is nothing for gas to download from the manager account itself, even if it were connected.
On top of that comes Google's second rule: it gives applications a list only of the ad accounts the signed-in user has been added to directly. Accounts you reach only through the manager account above them are not on that list, even though you normally see and manage them in Google Ads. The manager account therefore appears in the list as one ordinary item, but the accounts under it do not expand from it. So always connect the account where the campaigns actually run. If it is missing from the list, ask the administrator of the ad account to give your Google account access directly to it, not just to the manager account above it.
First check whether someone else on the team has already connected the account. A service link belongs to the user account of whoever signed in to Google, whereas a connected ad account belongs to the customer account. That is why it happens that you see nothing in Settings → Connected services and yet there is data in gas: a colleague connected the account under their own sign-in.
You will find the full overview in Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts. The Who links the account column shows the email of the person the link belongs to, and it is a link, so you can write to them right away. The value Nobody means the profile has no working link, and the row is highlighted as an error.
It is a good idea to agree on connecting with the administrator of the customer account. In their section they can see what is connected, who connected it and what state it is in, so they can tell you whether a new link is needed at all. Details are in the article "Who linked the account".
Steps
- Open Settings in the left menu and click the Connected services tab. A dashboard with tiles for the individual platforms opens.
- Click the Google accounts tile. A table of the Google links that belong to you appears. The Account column shows the email, the Services column shows which Google services are allowed for the link.
- Click the email of the link you want to connect the ad account from. Its detail opens with a horizontal row of tabs. Only the allowed services are in the row.
- Switch to the Google Ads tab. A table of the already connected ad accounts appears. If you have not connected any yet, it is empty.
- Click the Connect Google Ads account button above the table. The Google Ads connection dialog opens.
- Open the Account field. After the dialog opens, gas asks Google for the list of ad accounts you have access to, which may take a moment. Select the account you want to connect. Accounts that are already connected under this link are greyed out in the list and cannot be selected.
- You can leave the Account name field empty, in which case the name from Google Ads is used. If you fill in your own, you will see the account in gas under that name. A custom name has to have at least 3 characters.
- Leave the Agency account checkbox empty if the ad account runs campaigns for a single advertiser. Tick it only when you run campaigns for several customers under one ad account. gas then does not take all the data from the account but filters it by the tags set on the campaigns in gas.
- In the Customer account field select the customer accounts the ad account should be shown to. If you manage a single customer account, it is filled in automatically and you will not see the field. Accounts that cannot be selected have the reason listed next to them.
- Click the Connect account button. The dialog closes and the new row appears in the table.
What happens next
Right after you confirm, you will see these changes:
- The account is added to the table on the Google Ads tab. The Name column shows its name, the Currency column the currency taken over from Google Ads (spend is then shown in it) and the Agency account column whether you ticked the option of the same name. The last column, Actions, contains icons for further changes. If you manage several customer accounts, a Customers column is added as well, with an overview of who the account is assigned to.
- A message Adding a new account appears in the notification bell in the top bar, confirming that the account was linked successfully.
- If you have scheduled reports the new account fits into, gas offers to add it to them straight away. You can decline the offer and add the account to the reports later.
Data will not arrive immediately. gas downloads Google Ads statistics at its own pace: today's figures are refreshed roughly once an hour, complete daily data is calculated overnight. At the same time the campaign history is being filled in, so you will see the first complete overviews in a matter of hours, not minutes. Check the result in the Google Ads section in the left menu. Set the period the campaigns fall into in the page header.
It cannot go faster than Google, and the speed differs from one figure to another. Clicks, impressions and cost are ready at Google within about an hour. Conversions counted by last click come in within about three hours, conversions counted by another attribution model within about fifteen hours, and conversions taken over from Google Analytics within about one day. Comparison figures, that is impression share and auction insights, are calculated by Google once a day, and click share in Search is delayed by around three days. Search terms reports, geographic reports and automatic placements are usually ready the next morning.
Campaign history is filled in retroactively, not just from the day you connected. How far back is determined by two different things. Google Ads itself keeps performance data for up to 11 years. However, gas only downloads the last few years of it, not the whole period Google offers, so with a long-running ad account the oldest campaigns will not appear in the overviews, even though you can still see them in Google Ads.
You can change the account settings at any time:
- The name and the Agency account option can be changed with the edit icon in the last column of the table. The row opens for editing and you confirm the changes.
- The assignment to customer accounts can be changed with the icon with the little figures, whose tooltip is Change customer. This icon is available only when you manage several customer accounts.
- Unlinking is done with the bin icon with the tooltip Delete account and confirmed with the Delete button. gas then reports that the account has been scheduled for deletion. The data is removed from gas, nothing changes on Google's servers. If you connect the same account again within 30 days, it is restored together with its history.
Common problems
The Google Ads tab is missing for the link
The box for Google Ads was not ticked on the Google consent screen. Link the Google account again and leave all the boxes ticked. If you allow no service at all, gas will not finish the link and will say that you did not allow access to any of the Google services and that you should tick at least one on your next attempt.
The ad account is missing from the list
Only accounts your Google account has direct access to are offered. gas cannot reach accounts held under a manager (MCC) account through it. Have access granted to you directly in the given ad account in Google Ads and then repeat the linking of the Google account so that the list is loaded again.
The message "All accounts are already linked. Select a different account."
All the ad accounts available under this sign-in are already connected. Either the account you are looking for is connected under a different Google link, or your Google account has no access to it.
Data stopped arriving after a colleague left the company
This is the most common cause of suddenly missing data. As soon as the colleague's permissions are taken away on the Google side or their account is cancelled, the link stops working, even though you still see the ad account in gas. Do not remove it and do not set it up again, you would lose the history.
- An active colleague who has access to the account in Google Ads connects it again. They go through the same steps as in the procedure above.
- Right after selecting the account they get the message Account … was linked by user … with an Take ownership button.
- With that button they take the account over under their own link. The history and the settings are preserved and data starts arriving again.
The same offer also appears when the account was linked by another user under a different Google account.
The message "You have account … linked via another account that you linked yourself. Do you need to relink it?"
You have already connected this ad account yourself, but under a different Google account of yours. The Relink button moves it under the link you are currently in.
The message "Account is already linked."
The selected ad account is already connected in gas. Check the table on the Google Ads tab of the individual Google links and the overview in Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts.
The customer account cannot be selected in the dialog
An unavailable account has the reason listed next to it. Limit reached means the plan does not allow any more profiles of this network, so raising the plan or unlinking an account you do not use will help. No permission means your role in that customer account is not enough for connecting, so contact its administrator. Feature not in plan means that customer account has not paid for Google Ads. If all of your customer accounts are unavailable, gas says so above the selection.
A yellow Paused label is showing next to the account name
Access for the whole Google link has ended, typically after a password change or after the consent was withdrawn on the Google side. Click the label and then the Reconnect button in the bubble, which signs you in to Google again. The connected ad accounts are restored automatically, you do not have to select them again.
A yellow Missing permission label is showing next to the account name
Or there is a warning above the table saying that some profiles of this connection have lost permission. The link as a whole works, but gas has lost permission to this particular ad account. The bubble next to the label shows the date since which data has not been arriving, and the warning above the table lists the affected accounts. Fix the access in the Google Ads settings and then click Reconnect.
The account is connected but there is no data in the Google Ads section
Go through these options one by one: less than a few hours have passed since connecting and the data has not been downloaded yet, the period selected in the page header does not match the time the campaigns were running, you are switched to a different customer account than the one you assigned the ad account to, or the limit on the number of profiles in the plan has been reached. When the limit is exceeded, the accounts above it stop being downloaded and the administrators of the customer account get a warning.
Figures for past days changed retroactively
It is not a fault of gas or of your account, Google itself adjusts its data retroactively. It removes invalid traffic, that is bots and accidental clicks, adds late conversions and, at the end of the month, applies billing adjustments, for example for overdelivery or for promotional credits. With conversions the shift is normal: a customer may buy several days after the click, and the so-called conversion window, during which the purchase is still credited to the ad, is usually set to 30 days and can be up to 90 days. Figures for an older period are therefore sometimes still being adjusted weeks later.
I deleted the ad account by mistake
Connect it again the same way as the first time. If you manage it within 30 days of the deletion, it is restored together with the history downloaded so far.