Google Ads Widgets for Dashboards and Reports

Introduction to Google Ads Widgets

Google Ads widgets allow you to monitor and analyze your advertising performance without leaving your CRM. These pre-built components display key metrics like spend, clicks, and conversions directly on your sub-account dashboard or within custom reports, providing a unified view for you and your clients.

Key Benefits

Using Google Ads widgets offers several advantages:

• Centralized Monitoring: Keep track of your total ad spend and cost trends at a glance to avoid budget surprises.
• Full Funnel Visibility: See the entire customer journey from impressions and clicks through to conversions in a single location.
• Campaign Performance Insights: Identify your best and worst-performing campaigns with breakdowns for clicks and conversions.
• Cost Efficiency Analysis: Monitor your average cost per click to assess the health of your bidding strategy.
• Integration with Business Data: Use Google Ads metrics in Custom Metrics to calculate key performance indicators like return on ad spend by combining ad data with pipeline or revenue information.

Prerequisites and Access

Before you can use Google Ads widgets, you must complete the following setup:

• Connect Your Google Ads Account: Navigate to your sub-account Settings, then to Integrations, and select Google Ads. You will need to connect using your Google account, Manager account (MCC), and specific Ad account. Once connected at the sub-account level, all widgets will automatically use this integration.
• User Permissions: Ensure that the user has the necessary permissions to view and edit dashboards, as well as to create and schedule custom reports.

Available Widgets

There are 11 different Google Ads widgets you can use, each focusing on a specific metric. You can configure the chart type, apply conditions, and customize the theme for each one.

• Total Conversions: Shows the overall number of conversions for the selected date range and campaigns.
• Conversions Over Time: Displays a trend line of conversions to help identify patterns.
• Total Cost: Provides the total amount spent on ads.
• Cost Over Time: Illustrates how your ad spend has changed over a period.
• Total Clicks: Shows the aggregate number of clicks your ads have received.
• Clicks Over Time: Presents a trend of click volume.
• Total Impressions: Displays the total number of times your ads were shown.
• Impressions Over Time: Shows the trend of your ad impressions.
• Clicks by Campaign: A bar chart comparing click performance across different campaigns.
• Conversions by Campaign: A bar chart comparing conversion performance across campaigns.
• CPC (Cost Per Click): Shows the average cost for each click across all campaigns.

Dashboard Widgets vs. Custom Report Widgets

The same 11 widgets are available in both dashboards and custom reports, but they serve different purposes.

• Dashboards: Ideal for real-time, ongoing monitoring. Widgets on a dashboard update automatically and provide an always-on view of performance. You can combine Google Ads widgets with others, such as Meta Ads or Google Analytics, for a comprehensive marketing overview.
• Custom Reports: Best for scheduled delivery to clients. You can add widgets to a report layout and set up automatic email delivery on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

How to Add Google Ads Widgets

Adding Widgets to a Dashboard

1. Ensure your Google Ads account is connected at the sub-account level via Settings > Integrations > Google Ads.
2. Navigate to the Dashboards section in your sub-account.
3. Open an existing dashboard or create a new one.
4. Click the Edit dashboard button.
5. Click + Add widget to open the widget panel.
6. Scroll to the Google Ads section and select the desired widget to add it to your dashboard.
7. Configure the widget using the available tabs for Integration, Configure, Conditions, and Themes.
8. Click Save changes to finalize.

Pro Tip: For a quick overview, create a top row with stat cards for Total Cost, Total Conversions, and CPC. Below these, add trend lines for Cost Over Time and Conversions Over Time.

Adding Widgets to a Custom Report

1. Go to Reporting > Custom reports in your sub-account.
2. Open an existing report or click New report.
3. Choose to start with a blank canvas, a template, or by importing a dashboard layout.
4. Click Add widget / element.
5. Select the desired widget from the Google Ads section.
6. Configure the widget settings as needed.

Configuring Google Ads Widgets

After adding a widget, you can customize it using several configuration tabs:

• Integration Tab: Manage the connection to your Google Ads account.
• Configure Tab: Set the date range, choose specific campaigns to include, and select the chart type.
• Conditions Tab: Apply filters to the data displayed by the widget.
• Themes Tab: Customize the visual appearance, such as colors and fonts, to match your branding.