Ways to see Google Ads, Meta Ads, and GA4 in one place
If you are running ads and also looking at the site’s numbers, every week it goes like this.
Open Google Ads. Open Meta Ads. Open GA4. Open Search Console. By the time the 4 are open, you are fairly tired.
There are several ways to look at them together, and some of them can be done for free. Whichever you choose, one problem remains that does not get solved. This sorts it out, including that far.
I am building Shoryaku AI ( https://shoryaku.net ), a marketing-support SaaS. The first half of this article is a comparison of the means. The second half writes about our own connection feature.
The real cost of “going around to look”
It is not only time. There are 3 actual harms.
The first is that it does not continue. Even if you decide to look every Monday, by the 3rd week you stop opening them. When the work is split into 4 times, it goes that way.
The second is that the periods slip. Google Ads is through today, GA4 is through yesterday, and Search Console is through 3 days ago. If you open them separately, the numbers you meant to compare are not the same period.
The third is the most troublesome, and it is that they cannot be added together.
A “conversion” in Google Ads and a “key event” in GA4 differ not only in the name. The way they are counted differs. The results of Meta Ads also do not match between Meta’s measurement and GA4’s measurement. If you add these, a number larger than the actual one comes out.
This third one is not solved automatically, whichever tool you put in. The matter of the means of collecting, and the matter of how to read the numbers once they are collected, are different things.
Comparing the means
| Way | Rough cost | Where it fits | What is hard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go around the management screens and transcribe | ¥0 | 1 to 2 media | It does not continue. A transcription mistake cannot be noticed |
| Looker Studio | ¥0 | Enough with Google products alone | There is no Meta Ads connector in the standard set |
| Connector SaaS | From around $39 a month | Many media. You want to flow them into a spreadsheet or a BI tool | You have to build the place they are flowed into |
| Report SaaS | From around $20 to around $64 a month | Produce a fixed report every month | The unit of billing differs by company |
| BI tool | From several tens of thousands of yen | There is other data inside the company, and you want to look across it | Too much for an individual or a small operation. Someone has to build it |
| Call each medium’s API yourself | ¥0 plus the effort | You can develop | You take on all of the authentication and the specification changes |
The price bands of connector SaaS and report SaaS are the numbers from when each company’s official page was checked in A price comparison of 8 marketing-analytics SaaS products. The unit of billing is scattered across “number of customers,” “number of data sources,” and “number of dashboards,” so do not compare by looking at the monthly fee alone.
You should try Looker Studio first
It is free. And the connectors that Google itself provides include Google Analytics, Search Console, and Google Ads (Google’s official documentation).
Of the 4 screens named at the start, 3 are Google products. Just having those gathered onto one page reduces the work of going around by a lot. Considering a paid tool without trying here first is a waste.
Where it catches is Meta Ads. The list of connectors that Google provides does not include Facebook / Meta Ads. You end up looking separately for a connector that a third party made. If you remember that “Google products can be gathered for free, but Meta alone becomes a separate problem,” the consideration finishes faster.
Two things you can do from today, that do not depend on a tool
Fix the period
Whichever means you choose, decide the period to compare first, and do not move it.
The recommendation is “the most recent 28 days versus the 28 days before that.”
- 7 days shows a bias by the day of the week. One holiday going in is enough to change the conclusion
- 30 days changes the number of each weekday depending on the month. Between a month with 8 weekend days and a month with 10, B2B numbers naturally go up and down
- 28 days is exactly 4 weeks. The composition of the weekdays is always the same
And when you cross media, enter the same date range by hand. The “past 30 days” button on each screen can have a different closing day.
Decide what may be added, and what must not
| May be added | Must not be added |
|---|---|
| Spend, clicks, and impressions inside the same medium | Conversion counts that cross media |
| Results that are counted by the same measurement method | A metric whose definition differs even when the name is the same |
When you cross media, line them up instead of summing them. Place “the Google Ads CPA is ¥◯, and Meta Ads is ¥◯” side by side, and compare by the ratio. Do not total them into one CPA. This alone clearly reduces the number of times the judgment is wrong.
And then, you stop looking at the dashboard
To write it honestly, even if you make a dashboard, you generally stop looking at it in about 2 weeks.
The reason is clear. The numbers are only lined up, and what to do next is not written.
- The CPA went up. So what do you do
- Traffic from search decreased. Is it the season, or did the rank fall
- Instagram reach grew. Did that connect to revenue
This “so what do you do” is not filled in by changing the means of collecting. I think this is the place a person who made a dashboard hits last.
Shoryaku AI’s connection feature
The problems named in the first half are put into the design as they are.
What you connect is 5. Google Analytics, Google Search Console, Google Ads, Meta Ads, and Instagram. All of them are OAuth, and you connect from a button on the screen. There is no place where an account ID or an API key is entered by hand.
Connecting alone does not make it a subject of analysis. After the connection, you choose “which property to look at” and “which ad account to look at.” Until you choose, it does not go and read, so it does not, on its own, read another account that happens to be visible under the same login.
The token is saved in a place separate from the body of the connection information. It is refreshed automatically before the expiration, and only when the refresh fails does the screen show “re-authentication is required.” At that time, what the user can fix by connecting again, and a fault in the settings on our side, are treated internally as different things. This is so that the user is not made to press, over and over, something that will not be fixed.
And numbers that cross media are not summed. “What must not be added,” written above, is made a rule of the implementation as it is. The monthly review also lines them up by medium and shows them that way.
On top of that, producing the “so what do you do” is the main part. From the numbers that were collected, it produces the move to do this week, with the basis, the steps, and the KPI. A move whose acquisition cost does not fit is dropped on the spot (how it works).
If you want an AI tool you have on hand to read it directly, the same data can be pulled via MCP. You can also use them together: leave the screen you made in Looker Studio, and use this only for the judgment.
When it does not fit
- If you are using Yahoo! Ads, TikTok, or LINE, it is not enough. What is supported is only these 5: Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Ads, Meta Ads, and Instagram
- If you want to assemble the look freely, Looker Studio or a BI tool fits better. This does not have a feature for building out a dashboard
- If you want to look down to the ad-set or creative level, the Pro plan is required. Analysis at the account and campaign level can be used on every plan
- If you want to operate the ads from the tool, this is a different thing. Even when connected, it does not write. It does not pause an ad or change a budget
To try it
A 14-day free trial can be tried with no card registration at the start. A connection can be added or removed later.
How to choose a plan is in another article. If you are at the stage of only having a CSV on hand, there is also CSV sales diagnosis, which does not require registration.