Google Ads
Connect Google Ads, choose the accounts Meerkats reads, and let agents act on campaigns, budgets, keywords and negatives with your approval.
The Google Ads connection imports every campaign type (Search, Shopping, Performance Max, Display, Video, Demand Gen and App), their ad groups, ads, keywords, search terms, assets and Merchant Center products, with daily performance and the segments Google reports.
Google keeps change history for about 30 days. Meerkats ingests it on every sync, so your account's history stays available after Google drops it.
| How it connects | Sign in and approve |
| Reads | Campaigns and budgets, Ad groups, ads, Keywords and negatives, Search terms, Assets and asset groups, Merchant Center products, Conversion actions, Daily performance, Change history, Account and billing |
| Can change | Pause or enable a campaign, ad group, ad or keyword; Lower a campaign budget; Raise a campaign budget; Change a keyword bid or a bid-strategy target; Add a negative keyword; Add keywords, ads or ad groups; Create a campaign |
| Refresh | On your plan's schedule, plus Resync anytime |
Before you start#
- A Google account with Admin or Standard access to the Google Ads accounts you want to connect. Read only access is enough to read.
- If your accounts sit under a manager account (MCC), sign in with a user on the manager account and you can connect them all at once.
- Auto-tagging turned on in Google Ads, so Meerkats can match clicks (GCLID) to orders.
Permissions#
Google Ads asks you to approve these permissions. Each one is listed with why Meerkats needs it.
| Permission | Why Meerkats needs it |
|---|---|
https://www.googleapis.com/auth/adwords | Read and manage Google Ads accounts (the only scope Google Ads offers; what Meerkats does with it is limited by your approvals) |
openid, email | Identify the Google account that connected |
Connect#
1. Connect Google Ads#
- Open Integrations
In the sidebar, select Integrations.
- Choose Google-Ads
Find Google-Ads under Available connectors and select Connect.
- Sign in with Google and allow access
Choose the Google account that can see your ads accounts and select Allow. Meerkats never sees your password.
- Pick the accounts
Tick the customer accounts to sync. Manager accounts expand to show the accounts under them.
2. Run the first sync#
- Open the Bronze Layer
Go to Data Hub › Bronze Layer and pick Google. Select Resync.
- Check Sync History
Each run lists its status and row counts. The first run imports your history and can take a few minutes.
- Browse the data
Use the Campaigns, Ad Groups, Ads, Keywords and Search Terms tabs. Click a campaign to expand its ad groups, then drill into ads, keywords and search terms.
What syncs#
| Google Ads | In Meerkats |
|---|---|
| Campaigns and budgets | Type, status, bidding strategy and portfolio, budget (shared or not), networks, geo and language targets, schedule |
| Ad groups, ads | Status, default bid, ad type, headlines and descriptions, final URLs, approval status, ad strength |
| Keywords and negatives | Text, match type, bid, status, quality score and its three components; negative keywords at every level and shared lists; placement exclusions |
| Search terms | The queries that triggered your ads, with whether each is already a keyword or a negative |
| Assets and asset groups | Sitelinks, callouts, images, videos, lead forms, logos, and Performance Max asset groups with performance labels |
| Merchant Center products | Item ID, title, brand, product type, category, price, availability, custom labels, feed diagnostics |
| Conversion actions | Every conversion action: category, source, counting, windows, attribution model, whether it counts in Conversions |
| Daily performance | By day with segments: device, network, top vs other, age, gender, location, hour, conversion action |
| Change history | Who changed what, old and new value, when (kept past Google's 30-day limit) |
| Account and billing | Currency, time zone, auto-tagging state, invoices and invalid-click credits |
Raw data lands in Data Hub › Bronze Layer. Modelled tables, with metrics defined once, are in Data Hub › Gold Layer. Every number in a report or an agent’s answer comes from a query on these tables, never from the model’s own arithmetic.
Metrics you get#
The metrics people ask for most, named as Google Ads names them. The full list, with each definition, is in the metric catalog.
ClicksImpressionsCTRCostAvg. CPCConversionsConv. valueConv. value / costCost / conv.Search impression shareSearch lost IS (budget)Search lost IS (rank)Quality scoreInvalid clicks
How often it syncs#
Meerkats syncs on your plan's schedule: daily on Free, hourly on the $49 plan, every 30 minutes on $149 and every 15 minutes on $399. You can run a sync at any time with Resync in Data Hub › Bronze Layer.
- Google Ads reports in the account's time zone and currency; Meerkats keeps both.
- Google has no column called ROAS. Its equivalent is Conv. value / cost, shown as a decimal. Meerkats shows it under that name in Google reports and as ROAS in cross-platform views.
- Conversions are dated by click by default. Meerkats also imports conversions by conversion time, which is what you see when comparing to orders.
What Meerkats can change#
In every connected tool, Meerkats can create, read, update and delete records, within the permissions you grant and the permissions the tool allows. These are the changes it proposes for Google Ads, and the limit that applies to each.
| Change | Limit |
|---|---|
| Pause or enable a campaign, ad group, ad or keyword | Medium risk: always proposed for approval |
| Lower a campaign budget | Up to 20% per change |
| Raise a campaign budget | Up to 50% per week per campaign |
| Change a keyword bid or a bid-strategy target | Up to 15% per change; bidding changes wait 14 days after the last one |
| Add a negative keyword | Low risk: can run on its own once you allow it |
| Add keywords, ads or ad groups | Proposed for approval |
| Create a campaign | Created paused; a second approval switches it on |
How every change is governed
Every change starts as a proposal in your Inbox. Nothing changes in the connected tool until a person approves it, unless you set that rule to act on its own.
Before it runs an approved change, Meerkats re-reads the live value. If the value moved since the proposal, it asks again instead of acting on stale data.
Meerkats stores the value it replaced, so every change can be undone from Agents run history.
Anything Meerkats creates starts paused. Switching it on is a second, separate approval.
Example automations#
Type any of these on the New automation page (Automation Agents › + New Agent).
- “Add search terms with 30+ clicks and no conversions as negative keywords, and show me the list first”
- “Alert me when any Search campaign loses more than 20% impression share to budget”
- “Lower the budget by 15% on campaigns whose conv. value / cost has been under 2 for a week”
Troubleshooting#
I only see one account, but I manage several
You signed in with a user on a single account. Sign in with a user on the manager account (MCC) to see all the accounts under it.
Google Ads asks me to re-authorize
Google revokes access when you change your password, remove Meerkats from your Google account's third-party access, or after six months without use. Select Connect on Google-Ads again.
Search terms are missing
Google only reports search terms with enough volume. Terms below its privacy threshold never appear in the API or the Google Ads UI.
Clicks don't match orders
Check that auto-tagging is on in Google Ads and that your store keeps the GCLID through checkout. Without it, Meerkats can only use Google's own conversion counts.