How to Connect Google Ads to Power BI

Bringing your Google Ads data into Power BI is one of the quickest ways to see your campaign performance in a whole new light. Instead of being stuck in the standard Google Ads interface, you can blend your ad spend with sales data, traffic metrics, and customer information to get a complete picture of your return on investment. This article will show you the most common methods for connecting the two platforms and help you choose the right one for your needs.

Why Connect Google Ads to Power BI?

The reporting dashboard inside Google Ads is useful for quick checks, but it works in a silo. When you want to answer bigger business questions, you need to pull that data out and combine it with other information. Linking your ad data to a powerful tool like Power BI unlocks several key advantages.

• Unified Reporting Dashboard: Your ad performance doesn't exist in a vacuum. By pulling it into Power BI, you can visualize it alongside data from Google Analytics, your CRM (like Salesforce or HubSpot), and your sales platform (like Shopify or Stripe). This lets you build a single dashboard that tracks the entire customer journey, from the first ad click to the final sale.
• Custom Visualizations and Deeper Analysis: Power BI offers far more flexibility for visualization than the Google Ads interface. You can create custom-calculated columns (like profit margin per campaign), build interactive charts that drill down into specific ad groups or keywords, and track performance trends with advanced analytics.
• Automated & Always-On Reports: When set up correctly, your Power BI reports can automatically refresh with the latest data from Google Ads. This means no more manually downloading CSV files every Monday morning. Your dashboards are always up-to-date, allowing your team to make decisions based on real-time information.
• Combine Data Across Ad Accounts: If you're managing multiple Google Ads accounts for different regions, products, or clients, Power BI is the perfect place to consolidate all that data. You can compare performance across accounts on a single screen without having to constantly log in and out of different instances.

Choosing Your Connection Method

There are three primary ways to get your Google Ads data flowing into Power BI. Each has its own balance of cost, technical difficulty, and convenience. Let’s break them down so you can decide which path is right for you.

1. Third-Party Connectors: This is the easiest and most popular method. Middleware services (often called connectors or data pipelines) handle all the technical complexity of connecting to the Google Ads API for you. It's the "plug-and-play" option.
2. Manual CSV Exports: This is the free, no-frills method. You'll log into Google Ads, download the reports you need as CSV files, and then import them into Power BI. It's functional for one-off analyses but becomes tedious for ongoing reporting.
3. API & Custom Power Query Scripts: This is the most powerful and flexible method, but it's also highly technical. It involves writing your own M script in Power BI’s Power Query Editor to connect directly to the Google Ads API. This is best suited for data professionals with coding experience.

In the next sections, we'll walk through a step-by-step guide for each approach.

Method 1: Using a Third-Party Connector (The Easy Way)

Using a purpose-built connector is an ideal choice for marketers and analysts who want a reliable, automated connection without writing any code. Services like Supermetrics, Funnel.io, Stitch, and a variety of others act as a bridge between the Google Ads API and Power BI desktop. While these are paid services, the time they save often provides an immediate return on investment.

The exact steps vary slightly between connectors, but the general workflow is quite consistent.

Step-by-Step Guide:

1. Choose and Subscribe to a Connector Research a few data connectors and choose one that fits your budget and needs. Most offer a free trial, which is a great way to test the setup process before committing.
2. Get Data in Power BI Desktop Open your Power BI file, go to the Home ribbon, click Get Data, and then select More... From the list, search for the name of the connector service you chose. Many popular connectors have a dedicated integration that will appear in this list.
3. Authenticate and Configure Your Connection Once you’ve selected the connector, a new window will pop up prompting you to log in. First, you'll need to authorize the connector service itself. Then, you will be directed to authenticate your Google Account and grant the service permission to access your Google Ads data. This is a standard OAuth process that ensures a secure connection.
4. Select Your Reports, Metrics, and Dimensions This is where the power of connectors comes in. You'll get a user-friendly interface to build your query. No code needed. You can select:

• The specific Google Ads account(s) you want to pull data from.
• The report type you need (e.g., Campaign Performance, Keyword Report, Audience Report)
• The date range for your data (e.g., last 30 days, Year to Date).
• The dimensions (rows for your report, such as 'Campaign Name')
• Metrics (the numbers for your report, such as 'Cost', 'Impressions', and 'Conversions').

1. Load Data into Power BI After finalizing your selections, click "Load." The connector will fetch the data from the Google Ads API based on your specifications and pull it directly into Power BI as a new table. You can then jump into the "Model" or "Report" view to start building your visuals. The best part is that you can set this data to refresh automatically when you publish your report to the Power BI service.

Method 2: Using Manual CSV files (The Free "One-Off" Way)

So maybe you're not yet ready for a paid subscription or you just need to do a quick analysis. Manual export is always an option. While manual, and far from "real time," it doesn’t take you more than a few moments. However, it doesn’t contain the benefits of having an automated and always up-to-date dashboard.

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Log into Your Google Ads Account Go to ads.google.com and log in with the correct information from the account you wish to work with.
2. Navigate to and Customize Your Report Use the left-hand navigation pane to find the report you're after, such as Campaigns or Ad Group. Once there, you can apply filters, such as dates, or sort your data from highest to lowest spending. This step is about curating a report that provides data with a purpose.
3. Download CSV File Look for the "download" icon, usually in the top right of the report window. Click it, select CSV, and your browser will prompt you to save a file to your computer.
4. Import to Power BI In Power BI Desktop, click "Get Data" then "Text/CSV." Navigate to the file you just downloaded and select it.
5. Clean and Transform Your Data in Power Query Power BI will show you a preview of the data and open the Power Query Editor. This step is critical. The raw CSV export from Google Ads often contains extra rows at the top (like report title and date range, which need to be removed). Check for things like:

• Removing unnecessary rows
• Promoting headers
• Ensuring data types are correct (e.g., cost and conversion columns should be numeric)
• Renaming columns for clarity

After cleaning, click "Close & Apply" to load it into your Power BI model. Then you're ready to start building reports.

Method 3: Using a Custom Power Query Script (The Advanced Route)

This method is for the technically adventurous. It involves writing your own code in Power Query’s Advanced Editor to connect directly to the Google Ads API, giving you complete control over the data you fetch. It's complex but eliminates the need for a middleware subscription.

The Core Concepts:

• Get Google Ads API Access You’ll need to enable API access via the Google Cloud Platform. This includes getting OAuth 2 credentials (Client ID and client secret) and an API key.
• Understanding Google Ads Query Language (GAQL) Instead of using a URL, you'll write GAQL to specify the dimensions and metrics you need.

SELECT campaign.name, metrics.cost, metrics.clicks FROM campaign WHERE segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS

This is powerful because it can create highly-custom reports directly at the source.

• Writing the M Script in Power Query You’ll utilize the "Web.Contents" function in the Advanced Editor in Power BI to make API calls to Google. The script must:

A Note on Complexity

This route isn't for the faint of heart. It requires experience with APIs, OAuth flows, and Power Query programming. However, for large organizations with specific data requirements, it's the ultimate solution.

Conclusion

Connecting Google Ads to Power BI is a key step for turning raw performance metrics into business insights. Whether you choose a third-party connector, rely on manual CSV exports, or take on the technical challenge of building a custom query, the benefit is a report that is up-to-date, interactive, and combined with all your data.

We know that all these options, from managing subscriptions to API settings, still involve a lot of functions. That’s why we built Graphed. For marketers and teams who don't have time to sit through connector configurations or manual CSV downloads, we automate the entire process. You can connect your Google Ads account in seconds, then just sit back as the data flows into your dashboard with ease.