Paid

Google Ads integration for digital marketing agencies

Google Ads is where most digital marketing agency budgets land — and where misconfigured conversion tracking turns ad spend into noise. An incorrectly configured conversion action means Google's bidding algorithms optimise toward the wrong outcome; you only discover it when the campaign metrics don't match the actual sales/leads. Tracking Google Ads accounts and conversion actions as typed objects, linked to the container or site that fires them, is how mature agencies catch these issues structurally.

How Phloz models Google Ads

What Phloz records about Google Ads on each client's tracking map, and what it doesn't. Only GA4, Google Tag Manager and Google Ads connect to Phloz (read-only, through a connected Google account); everything else is recorded by your team. Health states are set by the person who checks, the structural audit re-runs weekly, and graph relationships show what each node connects to — so a node marked broken or overdue for verification shows up in the cross-client tracking-health view.

  • Google Ads account as a typed node with customer ID, manager (MCC) ID, currency, and an Enhanced Conversions on/off flag
  • Conversion actions as separate nodes, each with its ID, name, category (purchase / lead / sign-up / …), value type, and currency
  • Edges from the GTM container or site that fires each conversion — and the audit flags an account with no conversion action on the map
  • On Growth and above, the weekly Ads Health audit reads the account itself, including conversion tracking that stopped recording
  • A daily check on Growth and above: each account against its own last 4 weeks, with alerts for spend that stops or spikes, conversions short of what the clicks predict, rising cost per conversion and falling return on ad spend, shown on the overview and emailed to the client's assigned teammates

Common Google Ads configuration gotchas

The configuration mistakes agencies most often make with Google Ads, surfaced here as a checklist agencies can run at every client onboarding. Honest, useful, not gated behind a sales pitch — these are real and you should audit for them regardless of whether you use Phloz.

  • Duplicate conversion counting: agencies create new conversion actions for the same business outcome (e.g. "Purchase v2") without disabling the old one, doubling reported conversions. Audit by counting same-name actions per account.
  • Cross-account conversion tracking: agencies running multiple Google Ads accounts for one client forget to set the conversion action at the MCC level, splitting attribution across accounts. Set MCC-level conversions for cross-account budgets.
  • Enhanced Conversions misconfiguration: setting up Enhanced Conversions in Google Ads but forgetting to update the GTM tag with the email/phone hash field. Verify both surfaces at every Enhanced Conversions rollout.

Guides on Google Ads

At launch (V1)

Connect Google and import the client's Google Ads accounts onto the map; conversion actions are typed nodes you add. The client page shows a read-only Google Ads snapshot (spend, clicks, conversions, costliest keywords and search terms, budget-limited campaigns, disapproved ads), Search campaigns import into Plans, and on Growth and above a weekly Ads Health audit runs 14 rules against each account while a daily check compares it with its own last 4 weeks and alerts the client's assigned teammates.

Not built yet

Keeping the map in step with the account: a re-sync of conversion actions and the real Enhanced Conversions setting — today the import is one-off and the Enhanced Conversions flag arrives switched off.

Why we built the integration this way

Most agency CRMs treat third-party tools as text fields: "GA4 Property ID" goes in a custom column on the client record. That works at one or two clients and breaks at five. With Google Ads recorded on each client's tracking map — as its own typed node where Phloz has one, as fields and notes where it doesn't — the agency can answer "is this client's Google Ads setup documented, and when was it last verified?" per client, and see every client ranked by tracking health.

Most of it is entered by hand at onboarding: only GA4 properties, GTM containers and Google Ads accounts can be imported from a connected Google account, and nothing syncs afterwards. The manual pass forces explicit verification at the exact moment the agency takes over the client's tracking — the cheapest moment to catch the gotchas listed above, before they become production issues.

When to use this in your client onboarding flow

The pattern we recommend: at every new client onboarding (see the client onboarding audit use case), spend 30 minutes documenting the client's Google Ads configuration on the tracking map — IDs, tracking-code installations, conversion setup, the relationships to other systems. Verify each one fires by triggering a test event, then mark the node verified so the date is recorded. Add a recurring task (monthly, say) for the re-check, assigned to whoever owns tracking — the audit flags anything unverified for 30+ days either way.

Thirty minutes at onboarding costs far less than finding the same tracking issues during the first month of campaign optimisation — when finding them would mean a refund conversation. See the broader tracking infrastructure map use case for the agency-wide pattern.

Frequently asked questions

The three questions agencies ask most often about Phloz's Google Ads integration. Honest answers — same data we'd give a friend evaluating the integration.

Does Phloz pull live campaign data from Google Ads?
Yes, read-only. With Google connected, the client page shows a Google Ads snapshot — spend, clicks, conversions, costliest keywords and search terms, budget-limited campaigns and disapproved ads — and Search campaigns can be imported into Plans. On Growth and above, a weekly Ads Health audit runs 14 rules against each account, including conversion tracking that stopped recording. Phloz never changes anything in the account; Google's permission screen asks for full Ads access only because Google offers no read-only Ads permission.
Will Phloz tell us when a client's Google Ads performance drops?
Yes, on Growth and above. Every morning Phloz compares each mapped account's last 7 complete days with its own 4 weeks before, so there are no thresholds to set. It alerts on spend that stops, falls by half or spikes, conversions well below what the week's clicks predict (tested so a quiet week in a small account is not flagged), cost per conversion up by half, and return on ad spend down 40%. The alert shows on your overview and is emailed once to the teammates assigned to that client. It runs once a day, not in real time.
Can Phloz manage multiple Google Ads accounts under one client?
Yes — clients can have multiple linked Google Ads account nodes (common for agencies running US + EU + APAC instances of the same client). Each account has its own conversion actions. The graph view shows the full account family per client.
How does Phloz integrate with Google Ads MCC accounts?
There is no MCC node. Each Google Ads account node records its manager (MCC) ID as a field, so you can see which manager account a client's accounts sit under — but nothing cascades from the MCC in Phloz, and there is no cross-client MCC view.

Other integrations

Other paid and adjacent tools, and how Phloz handles each.

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