Set up Google Ads

Easily set up and configure Plannuh's integration to Google Ads

Introduction

Marketing organizations need insight into the performance of their marketing campaigns, which can be measured as cost-per-outcome (CPO) or ideally return on investment (ROI). Plannuh’s integration with Google automates this tracking. 

Plannuh connects to Google via a read-only integration to the Google Ads API, pulling summary data. This integration automatically creates Plannuh campaigns based on the campaigns that you configured in Google Ads. Plannuh also automatically maps Google metrics (impressions, clicks and conversions) to Plannuh metrics, which in turn are associated with each newly created Plannuh campaign. 

Once the connection is established, Plannuh automatically updates current metrics and cost data from Google daily. 

Integration Process

There are 2-3 steps for integrating your Google Ads with Plannuh (the assumption here is that you have the role of Plannuh Admin for your account and you have access to a Google Ads account): 

1. Connect Plannuh to Google Ads 
2. Assign Plannuh segments for synchronized campaigns 
3. Organize campaigns in a hierarchy (optional)

Now your Google Ads metric and cost data will automatically flow into Plannuh, providing insight into how your campaigns are tracking versus your targets as well as projected future performance! 

Step 1 - Connect Plannuh to Google

First you log into Plannuh (again, assuming that you are a Plannuh admin), go to the admin menu, and select Integrations > Enable Google Ads: 

Next you can choose which of your Plannuh budgets you would like to integrate with, along with the time of day you would like to automatically update cost and metric data from Google. Please note that the timezone will default to your current local timezone. 

If at any time you wish to update your Google Ads integration, then you can return to this window by going to the admin menu, and select Integrations > Google Ads Settings. 

After you click Save, if you are not already logged in to Google Ads, then Google Ads will authenticate you using your standard process;

In the case where you have access to multiple Google Ads accounts, you will then be prompted to choose a single account to integrate to. 

The connection is now complete! The process of creating campaigns in Plannuh that are synchronized with your Google Ads campaigns is now in process (it may take a few minutes to complete). 

Map Google metrics to Plannuh metrics (Optional) 

Once the integration is successful, you will be taken to a screen where you can select which metrics from Google Ads you would like to make available in Plannuh, and what they should be called. On the left side you will see the Google Ads metrics that are available (impressions, clicks and conversions). On the right side you define whether or not to map each Google metric to Plannuh, and if so then which Plannuh metric you would like to map it to. Please note that you can add custom metric definitions to Plannuh, and then they will be available here. 

By default, these metrics map to metrics in Plannuh called impressions, clicks and conversions, but you do have the ability to change this mapping on this screen. For example, if you would like conversions from Google to show up as “Leads” in Plannuh, and you would not like integrations or clicks to be populated, then you would update the settings such as this:

You can return to this screen later to change your Google to Plannuh metrics mapping by going to the admin menu, and select Integrations > Google Ads Mapping. 

Step 2 - Assigning a Segment 

Once your Google Ads campaigns are synced over to Plannuh, they will be automatically assigned to a default segment. We recommend that you reassign these new campaigns to the proper segment within your budget. 

You can navigate to the homepage and find the “Assign Segments to Imported Google Campaigns” widget and easily make this update: 

From the dropdowns in this widget, you can choose a segment for each campaign or select multiple campaigns at once and assign them all to the same segment. Once all your Google Ads campaigns are assigned to a segment, this widget will disappear. 

Once a campaign from Google has been created in Plannuh, it behaves differently from other Plannuh campaigns in two ways: 

1. The name and type can not be changed. 
2. Expenses are automatically created every month within the campaign. When an expense is created, it will have a “planned” amount equal to your daily spend limit (as set in Google) multiplied by the number of days in the month. That expense will update daily with your actual spend, which manifests as your “committed” amount. At the end of the month, the expense closes with the total spend for that campaign (from Google) as the “closed” amount for that expense. A new expense will be created for the next month. 

Step 3 (Optional) - Assigning Campaigns to a Hierarchy 

In Plannuh, you can define a hierarchy of goals and campaigns to track your team's progress. You can assign a campaign or goal to be the parent of another campaign, thereby creating what we call a parent/child relationship. When you do this, all the cost and metric data from children roll up to their parent, which then display aggregate cost and metric data. 

This is especially useful for tracking Google Ads campaigns in one place. For example, you might create a campaign called Demand Gen or simply Google Ads, and then make this campaign the parent of all the campaigns that came from your new integration. When you view the parent campaign, you can see the allocation, spend and metrics of all your Google Ad campaigns combined. To achieve hierarchy and assign a campaign to a parent campaign (or goal), you can drag and drop a campaign card onto another campaign: 

Or you can simply use the “Parent” field on the campaign detail page: