In this post I’ll show you how to build a Google Ads dashboard in Google Data Studio. Formally known as AdWords, Google Ads is an important digital marketing channel.

Below is what the dashboard looks like. Scroll down to see the steps required to make it and the finished report at the end of this blog post.

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Step 1: Choose Google Ads as a data source

Create a new data source and select Google Ads as the data source. In this example I am actually using the Google Ads sample data as my data source.

Step 2: Build Scorecards with various metrics

In this report there are various scorecards with some key metrics. I’ll go over some of the ones display in this report. These definitions are taken from the Google Ads glossary.

Impressions: How often your ad is shown. An impression is counted each time your ad is shown on a search result page or other site on the Google Network.

Clicks: When someone clicks your ad, like on the blue headline of a text ad, Google Ads counts that as a click.

Clickthrough rate (CTR): A ratio showing how often people who see your ad end up clicking it. Clickthrough rate (CTR) can be used to gauge how well your keywords and ads are performing.

Conversions: An action that’s counted when someone interacts with your ad (examples include clicking a text ad or viewing a video ad) and then takes an action that you’ve categorized as valuable to your business. These could include actions such as an online purchase or calling your business from a mobile phone.

Cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM): CPM stands for ‘ cost per mille’. It’s a way to bid where you pay per one thousand views (impressions) on the Google Display Network.

These scorecards are just a single metric compared to a previous time period. They are setup as shown below.

Step 3: Build some Time Series line charts

So let’s create the three time series line charts that are shown below.

They are created by setting up the Dimension as Day, the Metric as either Impressions, Clicks or CTR and have a comparison date range of the previous period.

Step 4: Build a Table showing Campaigns, Impressions, Clicks and CTR

The final part of our Google Ads dashboard is creating a table that shows campaigns, impressions, clicks and CTR. It also shows how these metrics have changed compared to the previous period.

One aspect of this table is that in addition to campaigns, impressions, clicks and CTR I’ve added additional dimensions and metrics. You can drill down into the Campaign dimension to see other dimensions such as Campaign type, Ad group, and Ad type. I’ve also added optional metrics so you can view Conversions and Avg CPM.

So if you drill down into the dimensions and switch some of the optional metrics you can get a table that looks like the one shown below. This allows you to customize the data displayed without adding any additional tables or charts.

Once you’ve created the table you can add in the finishing touches like a campaign filter for the table, a date range filter and a Google Ads data source filter as shown below.

Step 5: Viewing your final Google Ads dashboard

And below we have our finished Google Ads dashboard template.

Hope you found this post useful and helpful!

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