Tutorial: How to set up Google Ads report

[ivanagas]

Summary

Write a short paragraph on what this article is about. If applicable, what's the opinion or point we want to make in this article?

How to create a Google Ads report in PostHog using the data warehouse. Get data from Google Ads manager, get it into the data warehouse in PostHog, and write insights that query it.

Where will it be published?

select any that apply

• Blog
• Founders Hub
• Newsletter
• Product engineers Hub
• Tutorials
• Other (please specify)

Why type of article is this?

select any that apply

• High intent (i.e. comparisons and similar)
• Brand / opinionated (how we work and why, etc.)
• High-level guide (concepts, frameworks, ideas, etc.)
• Low-level guide (step-by-step guide / tutorial)
• Other (please specify)

Who is the primary audience?

select any that apply

• Founders
• Engineers
• Growth
• Marketing
• HackerNews
• Existing PostHog users
• Potential PostHog users

What (if any) keywords are we targeting?

list any that apply

Google ads report

Headline options

suggest a few angles

How to set up a Google Ads report

Will it need custom art?

• Yes
• No

Outline (optional)

draft headings / questions you want to answer

• Get data out of Google Ads
  • Go to Google Ads manager
  • Campaigns → Ads Groups
• Get data into S3
  • We haven’t set up an managed source yet, so we need to manage ourself. This does require manual upload, but you could set up an ETL tool to do this for you.
  • We’ll use S3 but R2, Google Cloud Storage, and Snowflake would all work too.
  • Follow instructions: https://posthog.com/docs/data-warehouse/setup/s3
  • Create bucket
  • Set up access policy
  • Upload Google Ads report CSV to bucket
• Set up S3 link in PostHog
  • Table, URL, etc.
  • File format CSV
  • Sync settings? Doesn’t really matter because CSV will be static.
  • How does it handle more tables being added?
• Create insights for your report
  • Spend trend
  • Impressions trend
  • Cost per conversion by campaign
    • Use campaign details captured by PostHog and cost from Google Ads. Use formula mode. Break down by campaign.
    • https://us.posthog.com/project/2/insights/R50Vf7Hs
  • Spend for traffic
  • Spend for first touch vs last touch
    • https://posthog.com/tutorials/first-last-touch-attribution
  • Spend vs Stripe revenue
    • Get spend for signed up users from Google Ads and revenue from Stripe users. Join all three.
  • More????