Connect Google Ads

Updated November 12, 2026

How to connect Google Ads

The connection takes about two minutes and requires no code:

1. In AdsGuru, open Settings, then Connections, then Connect Google Ads.
2. Sign in with a Google account that has admin or standard access to the Ads account you want managed.
3. Pick the account to manage. If you sign in through a manager account (MCC), pick the specific sub-accounts.
4. Review the requested scope (ads management only) and approve. The first sync starts immediately and pulls about 90 days of history.

Within the hour you get the first audit. From then on the account is scanned daily as part of the loop.

What access level you need

You need admin or standard access on the Google Ads account, because the OAuth grant can only pass along permissions your own user actually has. Google Ads access levels, and what they mean for connecting:

If you only have read-only access, ask the account owner to raise your access level (Google Ads: Admin, Access and security) or to make the connection themselves. Agencies connecting client accounts should connect with their own manager-account login rather than borrowing a client's credentials. The access page is also worth auditing while you are in there: people who left the company with standard access are a standing risk no tool can fix.

What OAuth means here

OAuth means you sign in on Google's own page and Google hands AdsGuru a revocable token scoped to specific permissions. AdsGuru never sees or stores your Google password, and the token cannot be used for anything outside its scope.

The scope requested is ads management: read campaign structure and performance, and apply changes to campaigns, ads, keywords and budgets. The grant does not include your Gmail, Drive, Analytics, or payments profile, and it does not allow changing who has access to the account. The token works until you revoke it, and revoking it kills access immediately. More on the model at security and access.

One detail worth knowing: tokens survive ordinary password changes but die with the user's account access. If the person who made the connection leaves the company, reconnect with another qualifying login before their access is removed, or the sync stops with them.

Manager accounts (MCC) and multiple accounts

A manager account works fine as the sign-in: authenticate once with the MCC login, then choose which sub-accounts AdsGuru should manage. Accounts you leave unselected are untouched and invisible to AdsGuru.

On the Pro plan, connect the accounts belonging to one business. On the Agency plan, each client workspace gets its own connections, so client A's Google Ads account never shares a workspace with client B's; see white label for how the client-facing side works.

You can add or remove managed sub-accounts later from Settings, Connections, without redoing the OAuth grant.

Agencies: connect client accounts cleanly

Agencies should connect through their own manager-account access rather than borrowed client logins, for three reasons: the client can see and revoke the grant from their side, your access survives client staff turnover, and nobody shares passwords, which both Google's terms and common sense prohibit.

The clean pattern: your MCC is linked to the client's account the normal way (request sent from the MCC, client accepts), you sign the AdsGuru connection in with your MCC login, and you select only that client's account into their own Agency-plan workspace. The client keeps admin, keeps billing, and keeps the platform-side kill switch, which is how a healthy agency relationship should look.

When an engagement ends, unwinding is equally clean: disconnect the workspace, and the client unlinks your MCC. Nothing about their account history or settings leaves with you.

What syncs after connecting

The first sync pulls roughly 90 days of history so the audit has a baseline to work from. Specifically: campaign, ad group, ad and keyword structure; spend, clicks, impressions and conversion data; conversion action definitions; budgets and bid strategies; and change history.

Daily syncs after that are incremental: yesterday's performance, plus configuration changes. The weekly search terms pull feeds the negative keyword routine. Sync is read-only; writes happen only when a proposal is approved (or an autopilot routine acts inside its caps), and each write is logged.

Nothing about the connection changes how your ads serve. Connecting is an observation step; the account behaves identically until the first approved change.

If you track offline or imported conversions, those arrive with whatever delay your import pipeline has; AdsGuru reads them when Google shows them, and the diagnosis layer accounts for conversion lag when judging recent performance, which is why the newest days are never used to condemn anything.

Troubleshooting the connection

The account does not appear in the picker

You are signed in with a Google account that lacks access to that Ads account. Check which Google identities have access under Admin, Access and security in Google Ads, and sign in with one of those, or get your access raised to standard.

You manage accounts through an MCC but see only one account

Sign in with the manager account login rather than an individual account login, then the picker lists sub-accounts. Sub-accounts your MCC lost access to will not appear.

The sync seems stuck or partial

Large accounts take longer on the first pull; 90 days of a big account is a lot of rows. If the audit has not arrived within a few hours, disconnect and reconnect from Settings, Connections, and if it persists write to hello@adsguru.co.

Google shows a warning during OAuth

Google lists the requested scope before you approve; confirm it says ads management and nothing broader. If anything looks off, stop and contact hello@adsguru.co rather than approving.

Recent days show fewer conversions than expected

That is conversion lag rather than a break: Google attributes conversions to the click date, so recent days fill in over time. Judgments and proposals exclude the still-filling window.

How to revoke access

You can revoke from either side, and both take effect immediately:

1. From Google: myaccount.google.com, Security, Third-party apps with account access, find AdsGuru, remove access. This kills the token platform-side regardless of anything in AdsGuru.
2. From AdsGuru: Settings, Connections, Disconnect next to the Google Ads connection.

Revoking stops all reads and writes at once. Your campaigns keep running exactly as they are at that moment; disconnecting changes nothing in the account itself. Data already synced is deleted within 30 days of disconnection, per the data policy.

What AdsGuru never gets

The connection never gives AdsGuru your Google password, access to your billing or payment methods, the ability to add or remove users, or anything outside the selected ad accounts. It cannot see other Google products on your account.

Everything AdsGuru applies is also written to Google Ads change history under the connection's identity, so you can independently verify every change without trusting our log. That separation is deliberate: your account, your platform-side audit trail, your kill switch.

If your organization requires a security review before connecting tools, the short honest summary for the reviewer: OAuth grant, ads-management scope only, revocable platform-side at any time, all writes logged and mirrored in Google's own change history, and synced data deleted within 30 days of disconnection.

Common questions

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