[beta]{class="badge informative"}
Google Ads
Google Ads is Google’s online advertising platform that helps you reach potential customers across Search, YouTube, Maps, and partner websites. You can target the right audience, control your budget, and track results to drive awareness, leads, and sales.
Use the Google Ads source to authenticate against the Google Ads API, connect advertiser accounts or manager-account hierarchies, and ingest reporting data into Experience Platform for downstream analytics and activation workflows.
Prerequisites
Before you connect your Google Ads account to Experience Platform, ensure that the following requirements are met.
IP address allowlist
You must add region-specific IP addresses to your allowlist prior to connecting your sources to Experience Platform. For more information, read the guide on allowlisting IP addresses to connect to Experience Platform for more information.
Configure permissions on Experience Platform
You must have both View Sources and Manage Sources permissions enabled for your account in order to connect your Google Ads account to Experience Platform. Contact your product administrator to obtain the necessary permissions. For more information, read the access control UI guide.
Google Ads access requirements
You must have valid Google Ads API credentials and access to the Google Ads account that you want to read from. If the target advertiser account is managed through a Google Ads manager account (MCC), then the connection must also include the correct login customer ID so that requests can be routed through the proper manager hierarchy.
In practice:
- If the target advertiser account is directly accessible by the OAuth-authorized user,
loginCustomerIdmay not be required. - If the advertiser account is accessible only through an MCC hierarchy, then
loginCustomerIdmust identify the manager account used to access that child account. - An incorrect or missing
loginCustomerIdcan result in authorization failures when attempting to query managed child accounts.
Gather required credentials
To connect Google Ads to Experience Platform, you must provide values for the following connection properties.
clientCustomerId123-456-7890.loginCustomerIddeveloperTokenrefreshTokenclientIdclientSecretgoogleAdsApiVersionv19 and newer.connectionSpec.idd771e9c1-4f26-40dc-8617-ce58c4b53702.About loginCustomerId
The loginCustomerId value is one of the most important configuration fields in the Google Ads source.
Use loginCustomerId when:
- The OAuth-authorized user has access through a manager account,
- The target advertiser account is a child account under an MCC,
- The account is not directly returned as a top-level accessible account.
Do not set loginCustomerId unnecessarily for directly accessible advertiser accounts. When possible, validate whether the account is directly accessible first, and only supply a manager ID when access truly depends on that hierarchy.
Authentication and connection behavior
The Google Ads source uses OAuth 2.0 to authenticate requests to the Google Ads API. Experience Platform stores the connection details in a base connection and uses the supplied credentials to authorize Google Ads API calls on behalf of the customer.
For manager-account scenarios, the connector may need to resolve the appropriate manager hierarchy in order to successfully access the target advertiser account. Internally, this typically involves:
- Enumerating accessible accounts,
- Determining whether an account is a manager account,
- Identifying non-manager leaf accounts,
- Resolving the correct loginCustomerId when the target account is reachable only through an MCC hierarchy.
This behavior is especially important for customers that manage multiple advertiser accounts from a single manager account structure.
Data selection and reporting behavior
Google Ads data selection is based on Google Ads Query Language (GAQL). During setup, you specify the attributes, segments, and metrics that should be retrieved for ingestion.
For large report pulls, Google Ads supports both standard search and streaming retrieval patterns. Internally, streaming retrieval is preferred for larger result sets because it allows report rows to be consumed incrementally rather than buffered page by page.
When configuring data selection in the Experience Platform UI, use the Google Ads Query Builder to choose the resource type and the fields that you want to ingest, validate the query, and then copy the required attributes into the source workflow.
Supported connection paths
You can connect Google Ads to Experience Platform using either APIs or the user interface.
Using APIs
Use the Flow Service API when you need programmatic setup, repeatable configuration, or incremental ingestion support. At a high level, the API workflow includes:
- Creating a base connection,
- Exploring the source configuration,
- Creating source and target connection,
- Creating a dataflow for ingestion
Using the UI
Use the Experience Platform Sources workspace for guided setup when you want to connect Google Ads through the UI. The UI flow supports credential entry, attribute selection, preview, and dataflow creation. At present, the UI path remains beta and supports one-time ingestion only.
Known limitations and notes
- The Google Ads source in the UI is currently beta.
- The UI currently supports one-time ingestion only.
- Use the API-based path for incremental ingestion.
- Experience Platform currently supports Google Ads API version
v19and newer. - Manager-account hierarchies require careful handling of
loginCustomerId; incorrect values can prevent access to child advertiser accounts.
Next steps
After you have gathered your credentials and confirmed your account access pattern, continue with one of the following setup paths: