Building a Google Ads Performance Dashboard in Looker Studio

Why Build a Google Ads Dashboard in Looker Studio?

The native Google Ads interface is powerful for campaign management but cumbersome for regular performance reporting. A Looker Studio dashboard gives stakeholders a clean, branded view of campaign performance without needing Google Ads access. It also lets you blend Google Ads conversion data with GA4 behaviour data in one view.

Connecting Google Ads to Looker Studio

Use the native Google Ads connector in Looker Studio. Select your account or MCC. If you manage multiple accounts, you can create separate data sources for each or use a blended data source to aggregate across accounts.

The Google Ads connector exposes all standard reporting metrics: impressions, clicks, cost, conversions, conversion value, and all campaign, ad group, and keyword dimensions.

Essential Metrics to Include

• Spend vs. Revenue: Side-by-side scorecards showing total cost and conversion value
• ROAS: Calculated field: Conversion value / Cost
• CPA: Calculated field: Cost / Conversions
• Impression share: How much of the available auction you're winning
• Quality Score trends: Table by keyword showing QS over time

Campaign Performance Table

Build a table with rows = campaigns and columns = Impressions, Clicks, CTR, Cost, Conversions, CPA, ROAS. Add conditional formatting to highlight campaigns with ROAS below target in red and above target in green. This lets anyone review 20+ campaigns at a glance and immediately spot what needs attention.

Blending Google Ads with GA4

Blend Google Ads cost data with GA4 session and behaviour data using campaign name as the join key. This lets you see both the pre-click performance (CTR, Quality Score) and the post-click behaviour (bounce rate, time on site, pages per session) in one combined report. See our Looker Studio dashboard service for a full-stack Google Ads reporting setup.

Setting Up Alerts

Looker Studio itself does not have alerting, but you can export data to Google Sheets via the Sheets connector and set up Google Sheets alert notifications when spend exceeds thresholds or ROAS drops below target.

For teams that need automated campaign management responses to performance changes, that logic lives in Google Ads automated rules or scripts — not in Looker Studio. Need help setting up proper conversion tracking first? That data quality is the foundation of any reliable Ads dashboard.