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How to See Google Ads Campaigns in Google Analytics 4

Cody Schneider•

Seeing your Google Ads campaign data directly within Google Analytics 4 unlocks a powerful, unified view of your marketing performance. This guide will walk you through linking your accounts and show you exactly where to find and analyze your campaign data inside GA4.

Why Connect Google Ads to GA4 Anyway?

You might be wondering why this is worth the effort when Google Ads has its own reporting. The magic happens when you see your advertising data in the same place as your website behavior data. It lets you answer questions that are difficult to tackle with siloed information.

Here’s what you gain:

  • Understand Post-Click Behavior: Google Ads tells you who clicked. GA4 tells you what they did next. You can see bounce rates, time on page, pages per session, and which content users from specific campaigns engage with the most. A campaign might get lots of cheap clicks, but if all those users leave immediately, it's not a success.

  • A Single Source of Truth for Conversions: You can import GA4 conversions into Google Ads, but viewing everything in GA4 gives you a more holistic view. You can compare conversions from paid search against organic search, social media, and email without bouncing between different platforms.

  • Deeper Audience Insights: Analyze the demographic and technographic data of the users your ads are attracting. Are your campaigns bringing in the high-value audience segments you want? GA4 helps you connect the dots between ad spend and audience quality.

  • See the Full User Journey: By combining data, you get a much clearer picture of the entire customer journey. You can see how paid search interacts with other channels and contributes to eventual conversions, even if it wasn't the last touchpoint.

Step-by-Step Guide: How to Link Google Ads to GA4

First things first, you need to connect your two accounts. This is a simple, one-time setup that allows the data to flow directly into your analytics property.

Prerequisites: The Right Permissions

To make the connection, you need to have the right access levels in both Google products:

  • In Google Analytics 4: You need Editor role on the GA4 property.

  • In Google Ads: You need Administrative access on the Google Ads account.

As long as you have those permissions, you can create the link in just a few clicks.

Linking Your Accounts

Follow these steps inside your Google Analytics 4 property:

  1. Navigate to Admin: Click the gear icon ('Admin') in the bottom-left corner of GA4.

  2. Find Product Links: In the 'Property' column, scroll down to the 'Product Links' section and click on Google Ads Links.

  3. Choose a Google Ads Account: Click the blue 'Link' button. On the next screen, click 'Choose Google Ads accounts'. You'll see a list of all Google Ads accounts associated with your email address. Find the correct one(s), check the box next to them, and hit 'Confirm'.

  4. Configure Settings: This is an important step. You'll see two options:

    • Enable Personalized Advertising: Leave this checked. It allows you to use GA4 audiences for your Google Ads remarketing campaigns, a very useful feature.

    • Enable Auto-Tagging: Absolutely leave this checked. This setting automatically adds a unique parameter (the GCLID, or "Google Click Identifier") to the end of your ad's destination URL. This is how GA4 correctly identifies and attributes traffic coming from your Google Ads campaigns. Turning this off breaks the connection.

  5. Submit: Click 'Next', review your settings, and then 'Submit'.

That's it! You've successfully linked your accounts. It's good practice to go back to the ‘Google Ads Links’ screen to confirm that the link appears in the table with a status of "Linked." Note that it can take up to 48 hours for new data to start appearing in your GA4 reports, so don't worry if you don't see it immediately.

Where to See Your Google Ads Campaign Data in GA4

Now that the data is flowing, let's find the reports. GA4 provides a few different ways to analyze your paid campaign performance.

The Main Traffic Acquisition Report

This is your primary destination for understanding where your website traffic is coming from. Here’s how to use it for Google Ads data:

  1. In the left-hand menu, navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition.

  2. By default, this report groups traffic by the 'Session default channel group' (e.g., 'Organic Search', 'Direct', 'Paid Search'). Your Google Ads traffic will primarily show up under 'Paid Search' and 'Paid Video'.

  3. To see individual campaigns, click the dropdown arrow above the table (where it says 'Session default channel group') and search for or select Session campaign.

The report will now show a row for each of your campaigns, including performance data like Sessions, Engaged Sessions, Conversions, and Total Revenue. You can use the search bar above the table to filter for just one specific campaign.

Key Dimensions to Analyze

Switching the primary dimension is how you dig deeper. Beyond 'Session campaign', you can look at:

  • Session source / medium: This will show 'google / cpc'. It’s useful for isolating all Google paid traffic.

  • Google Ads ad group name: See performance broken down by each ad group within your campaigns.

  • Google Ads keyword text: View the specific search keywords that are driving traffic and conversions.

  • Google Ads query: See the actual search terms users typed into Google before clicking your ad - great for finding new negative or positive keyword ideas.

How to Create a Custom Google Ads Performance Report

While the standard Traffic Acquisition report is good, its default view combines all traffic sources. For easier, daily monitoring, you can build a dedicated report that only shows your Google Ads data and includes advertising-specific metrics like cost and clicks.

This process is easier than it sounds and creates a permanent report you can access anytime.

  1. Go to the Library: In the bottom-left navigation menu of the 'Reports' section, click on Library. This is where all a property's reports are stored.

  2. Create a New Detail Report: Click the 'Create new report' button and select 'Create detail report' from the dropdown.

  3. Choose a Template: Select the Traffic acquisition template. This gives you a great starting point for your custom report.

  4. Customize the Dimensions: On the right side of the screen, click 'Dimensions'.

    • Set the 'Session campaign' dimension as the default by clicking the three dots next to it and choosing 'Set as default'.

    • Use the 'Add dimension' button to add other useful advertising dimensions, such as 'Google Ads ad group name', 'Google Ads keyword text', and 'Google Ads query'. Rearrange them in an order that makes sense to you.

  5. Customize the Metrics: Now click on 'Metrics'. Here's where we add the valuable cost metrics from Google Ads.

    • Click 'Add metric'.

    • Search for and add: Google Ads clicks, Google Ads cost, Cost per conversion, and Return on ad spend.

    • You can also rearrange or remove default metrics to focus on what matters most to your team.

  6. Filter for Only Google Ads Traffic: The final step is to create a filter so this report only displays paid search data.

    • At the bottom of the right-hand menu, under 'Report Filter', click 'Add filter'.

    • Create a filter where 'Session medium' exactly matches 'cpc'. This ensures only pay-per-click traffic appears in this report.

    • Click 'Apply'. You should see the report table update in real time.

  7. Save the Report: Click the blue 'Save' button in the top right. Give your report a memorable name like "Google Ads Performance" and save it.

  8. Add it to Your Navigation: Your report is saved, but you need to make it visible. Back on the Library page, find the ‘Lifecycle’ collection (or another relevant collection) and click 'Edit collection'. Find your new "Google Ads Performance" report in the right column and drag it into the 'Acquisition' topic on the left. Hit 'Save'.

Now, your new report will appear directly in the left-hand navigation under the Acquisition section, giving you a powerful, one-click view of all your most important Google Ads campaign metrics and dimensions.

Final Thoughts

Connecting your Google Ads account to Google Analytics 4 is a foundational step for any data-driven marketer. It moves you from just knowing who clicked your ads to deeply understanding what those users do on your website, giving you the context you need to optimize both your ad spend and your user experience. Using the steps above, you can find your data and even create a custom workspace tailored to your exact needs.

We built Graphed because we know that stitching together data across platforms and wrestling with report builders is time-consuming. Instead of manually creating these reports in GA4, you can connect your Google Ads and Analytics accounts to our platform in seconds. Then, you can simply ask in plain English, "Show me my top 5 Google Ads campaigns by ROAS this month." We instantly build a real-time dashboard with the answer, freeing you up to focus on the strategy and insights, not a dozen configuration menus.