The Google Ads section in the left menu shows the performance of your paid advertising from Google Ads: how much you spent, how many times the ads were shown, how many people clicked on them and how many conversions came out of it. A conversion is a completed action that you measure in Google Ads, for example a submitted form or an order. The data is downloaded into gas automatically, but you do not manage the advertising itself here: campaigns, budgets and ad texts cannot be changed from gas, they stay in Google Ads.
Before you start
- You only have the Google Ads section in the menu if it is included in the subscription of your customer account. If you do not see it in the menu, write through the contact form.
- At least one Google Ads ad account has to be connected to the customer account. Linking is done in Settings → Connected services → Google and is described in the article Linking a Google Ads account.
- Only the Administrator and User roles may connect an ad account. The Viewer role can only look at the data.
- When no ad account is connected, gas opens a No account window when you enter the section, with a Connect account button that takes you to the settings.
Ad account, campaign and ad group
Google Ads is organised into three levels and gas uses them with the same meaning. Without this orientation the numbers on individual pages are hard to read, because each page works with a different level.
- Ad account is the whole advertiser account. Billing, currency and people's access rights belong to it. In gas you pick it in the page header, and if you have several connected, you switch between them.
- Campaign has its own budget and settings, that is where and to whom the ads are shown. One ad account can contain any number of campaigns.
- Ad group ("ad group" in the Google Ads interface) is a group of similar ads and keywords inside one campaign. A campaign usually contains several of them, so that performance can be split by topic, product or target group.
Money and results add up from the bottom to the top: the sum of ad groups makes a campaign, the sum of campaigns makes the ad account. So when you are looking for where the budget was spent, open the ad groups of the campaign.
Performance Max campaigns have asset groups instead of ad groups, and Google keeps those as a separate level. That is why the list of ad groups can stay empty for these campaigns, even though the campaign is running and has its numbers in the Campaigns section.
Overview
Overview is the entry page of the section. It is made up of widgets, that is tiles with a single metric. By default you see a Reach graph, a Spend graph and the numeric cards Clicks, Interactions and Conversions.
In the page header you have the ad account selection, the period selection (for example Last 28 days, Last month or Custom range), the graph step選 (Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year), a graph type switch and a button for refreshing the data.
You can adjust the layout of the tiles. The three-dot button on the right in the header offers Add widget, Edit layout (in this mode tiles are dragged and removed) and Reset to default layout, which brings back the original set.
Pages of individual metrics
Below Overview each tracked metric has its own page: Spend, Reach, Clicks, Conversions, Interactions and Video views. They all look the same: three cards at the top and a large development graph below them.
- Total is the value for the selected period.
- Short-term trend compares the selected period with a period of the same length immediately before it.
- Long-term trend compares the selected period with the same period a year earlier.
What the individual metrics mean:
- Spend is the amount spent on advertising. gas always shows it in Czech korunas, even if the ad account is kept in another currency.
- Reach in this section is the number of ad impressions ("impressions" in Google Ads), that is how many times the ad was shown. One and the same person is counted as many times as they saw the ad.
- Clicks is the number of clicks on the ad.
- Conversions is the number of completed actions that you have set up as conversions in Google Ads. If you have no conversion measurement set up in Google Ads, the metric stays at zero and gas can do nothing about it, because it receives no numbers.
- Interactions is the main action according to the ad type: a click for a text ad, a view for a video ad and so on. That is why it tends to be higher than clicks alone.
- Video views only makes sense for video campaigns, for other campaign types it stays at zero.
Campaigns
The Campaigns page is a table of campaigns for the selected period. Unlike the other pages of the section, here you can select several ad accounts at once and see their campaigns together.
By default the table shows the columns Name, Campaigns, Reach, Spend, Clicks and Conversions. Through the column selection you can also add Cost per conversion, CTR (the share of clicks in the number of impressions) and Ad account, which is useful when you have several accounts selected. Customers with the tourism module also get a Destination column.
The Campaigns column does not show campaigns from Google Ads, but the campaigns you have created in gas. They are matched automatically by the campaign hash contained in the campaign name in Google Ads and by whether the dates of the two campaigns overlap.
The table can be sorted, filtered, exported and printed, and at the bottom it has a summary row for all listed campaigns. Clicking a campaign name takes you to its ad groups.
Only campaigns that really ran in the selected period, that is had at least some impressions, appear in the list. When a campaign is missing from the list, it is usually because it did not deliver in that period. Try extending the period.
Ad groups
The Ad groups page lists the ad groups of one ad account. The account is selected in the header and only one can be selected at a time.
The columns are Name, Campaigns (the name of the Google Ads campaign the ad group belongs to), Reach, Clicks, Spend, Conversions and CTR. Through the column selection you can add Interactions, Interaction rate and the ad group Type.
The numbers in this table are the total for the whole time the ad group has existed, not for the selected period. That is why the header here offers no period selection. When you compare this table with the Campaigns page, you are comparing the entire history with a selected period, and the numbers logically will not match.
When you get here by clicking a campaign name, there is a bar above the table with the campaign name and a Clear filters button, which returns the list to all ad groups of the account. If the account has no ad groups yet, the table says that you have no ad groups.
Ad group detail
Clicking an ad group name opens its detail. It too summarises the whole history of the ad group, not the selected period.
At the top there are the cards Spend, Reach, Clicks, CTR and Conversions, and next to them a panel with basic information: Profile (the ad account the ad group belongs to), Published (the first day for which the ad group reported data) and Content type (the ad group type according to Google Ads). If the ad group is matched with one of your campaigns in gas, or with a destination, you will see that here as well.
Below that is the Metric timeline graph. Spend and Reach are switched on in it, and by clicking in the legend you can add Clicks, Conversions and Interactions. At the very bottom there is a Daily metric timeline table, where each day is listed separately, including Conversion rate and Cost per conversion.
On a computer the page has a printer button in the top right, which prepares the detail for printing or for saving to PDF. On a phone neither the graph nor the daily table is shown, and gas writes instead that you should open the page on a larger screen.
For an ad group you will see a message in place of the preview saying that no preview is available. This is not an error: an ad group is an organisational folder, it has no image or video of its own.
How fresh the numbers are and why they change retroactively
The numbers in the Google Ads section are never immediate, and the day just gone keeps being recalculated for a while. This is not a measurement error, it is the way Google processes advertising data.
- Clicks, impressions and spend are among the fastest figures. Google refreshes them roughly once an hour and gas pulls them in at the same rhythm during the day, so you see today's data as it comes.
- Conversions are slower. Google assigns them to the day when the person clicked the ad, not to the day when they actually bought. When someone clicks on Monday and orders on Thursday, the conversion is added retroactively to Monday. With the last-click model conversions tend to be available within a few hours, with other attribution models (that is the rules by which Google splits the credit for a conversion) it takes longer. Depending on the conversion window that is set, Google can credit a conversion even several weeks after the click, at most 90 days.
- Invalid traffic is deducted retroactively. Google keeps evaluating invalid clicks and refunds the money for them. Clicks and spend for yesterday can therefore even go down after recalculation.
gas adapts to this: it recalculates closed days again at night and for conversions it goes several months back, so that late-credited conversions are filled in. Ad group data is updated once a day at night, so do not expect today's numbers for ad groups yet.
When you need numbers you can base a presentation or a report on, let a few days pass. For conversions a longer gap is safer, Google itself recommends evaluating a period that ended at least 30 days ago.
After a new ad account is connected, gas fills in the history several years back, not the whole time the account has existed. For older accounts you therefore will not find the oldest years in gas, even though Google Ads still shows them.
Common problems
I do not have the Google Ads section in the left menu
The section is paid and appears in the menu only if it is included in the customer account subscription. Check Settings → Customer account → Subscription, or write through the contact form and arrange an extension.
I open the section and gas reports No account
No Google Ads ad account is connected to the customer account. Click Connect account in the window, sign in to Google and select the ad account you want to track. The whole procedure is described in the article Linking a Google Ads account.
The ad account we manage is not in the selection
Either it is not connected to this customer account yet, or a colleague connected it under their own login. Open Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts, where all connected accounts are listed together with the Who links the account column showing the e-mail of the person the connection belongs to. If Nobody is shown for the account, the connection does not exist and the account has to be connected again.
The data stopped on a specific day
Most often the access to Google expired, for example after a password change or after permissions were removed on the Google Ads side. In Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts you can recognise such an account by the alert next to its name. Restoring it takes one sign-in to Google, and the missing days are then filled in automatically. A frequent cause is also a colleague who left the company: someone active connects the account again and, when selecting the profile, chooses Take ownership, so that the history and settings are kept.
Yesterday's numbers have changed since yesterday
That is how it should be. Google assigns conversions to the day of the click and credits them even with a delay of several days, and at the same time it deducts invalid traffic retroactively. A closed day therefore keeps moving in both directions for a while. Better evaluate with a gap of a few days, and an even longer one for conversions.
Conversions are zero, even though we know orders are coming in
gas only shows the conversions that Google Ads itself measures. When conversion measurement is not set up in Google Ads, or orders are measured elsewhere (for example only in Google Analytics), the column stays at zero. Setting up conversion measurement belongs in Google Ads and is done by whoever manages the account.
The numbers in Campaigns and in Ad groups do not match
Each page counts a different range. Campaigns shows the selected period, Ad groups and their detail add up the entire history of the ad group. When you need to compare both views, use the values from Campaigns, where you control the period yourself.
The campaign is running, but its ad groups are empty
For Performance Max campaigns Google works with asset groups instead of ad groups, and those are not in the ad group list. For other campaign types check whether you have the right ad account selected in the header, and whether a filter for another campaign is switched on (you can recognise it by the bar with the Clear filters button). For a freshly connected account the ad groups appear only after the night data download.
The campaign I am looking for is not in the list
The list only contains campaigns that delivered in the selected period. A campaign that was paused for the whole period or is only starting will not appear. Extend the period in the page header.
The Campaigns column is empty on all rows
The column shows the campaigns you have created in gas, not campaigns from Google Ads. For them to be matched, the campaign hash from gas has to be contained in the campaign name in Google Ads and the dates of both campaigns have to overlap. When you have no campaign created in gas, the column will always stay empty.
The spend does not match what Google Ads shows
When the ad account is kept in a currency other than Czech korunas, gas converts the spend at an exchange rate, so a small difference from the Google Ads interface is normal. The second cause tends to be a different period or a different moment of viewing: both sides are still catching up on recent days. Details about the conversion are described in the article Currency and spend conversion.
The history does not go back as far as I need
After an account is connected, gas fills in several years back, not the whole history of the account. It will not pull in older data from Google Ads any more. If you need an older period for comparison, export it directly from Google Ads.
On my phone I cannot see the graph or the daily table
The ad group detail shows the graph and the daily table only on a larger screen, on a phone they would be unreadable. gas writes instead that you should open the page in a browser on a computer. The lists of campaigns and ad groups are shown as cards on a phone and work normally.
The data in the section looks old, refreshing does not help
The refresh button in the page header loads again what gas has stored, it does not reach out to Google for new numbers. New data arrives automatically: today's data during the day roughly every hour, closed days and ad groups at night. If the numbers do not grow even the next day, it is most likely an expired access, see the situation above.
I need help and do not know what to do next
Write through the contact form. Add to your message the name of the customer account, which ad account and campaign it concerns, what period you had set and a screenshot. With this information the problem can be traced significantly faster.