How to Integrate Google Ads and Wicked Reports

The quick process to integrate Google Ad costs and clicks to Wicked Reports lead and sale attribution.

1. Common Google Wicked Reports Scenarios 

2. How to integrate Google Ads with Wicked Reports

   1. Step #1 - Connect your Google Ads account(s) to your Wicked Reports account

   2. Step #2 Tracking template setup within your Google Ads account(s)

   3. Step #3 - Wicked Reports tracking script on all forms and destination URLs of your Google Ads

3. (Advanced) Push Wicked Lead Conversion into Google Offline Conversion via gclid

4. YouTube considerations

5. Troubleshooting

Common Google Wicked Reports Scenarios 

• Looking to get ROI on Google ad spend
• Leads take time to buy from Google ads and want to connect customer lifetime value back to ad spend
• High value subscription customers and you’d like the recurring purchase to track back to the top and middle of the funnel ad clicks
• Multiple ad accounts to connect to 1 Wicked Reports’ brand account

How to integrate Google Ads with Wicked Reports

The Google Ads integration process consists of 3 steps:

1. Connect your Google Ads account(s) to your Wicked Reports account
2. Tracking template setup within your Google Ads account
3. Wicked tracking script on all forms and destination URLs of your Google Ads

Step #1 - Connect your Google Ads account(s) to your Wicked Reports account

Time: 1 minute

Go to the Authorizations Tab

Click connect in the Google Ad connection box under Advertising 

Follow the connection wizard instructions:

 

and pick the gmail account that has rights to the ad account(s) you wish to connect to Wicked Reports.

After account success, you will see a screen like this:

Click the copy template button, and then proceed to Step #2 Tracking template setup within your Google Ads account(s).

Step #1 Tips:

1. You can select multiple ad accounts for 1 brand (we have some people with upwards of a dozen accounts for 1 advertiser).
2. If you don’t see your ad accounts listed, you might have to try a different Gmail.
3. If you only have 1 account for that Gmail, it will connect right away without the need to select a specific Google ad account.
4. If you receive any odd messages from the Google wizard, contact support.
5. One odd message from Google could be this message below:
   1. To fix this issue of “2-step verification not enrolled”, head on over to your Google account. You should see a notification at the top similar to this:
      

Click on the warning and follow the Google wizard instructions to turn 2-step on (it seems to be required now).  Then come back to Wicked and start the integration process again.

Step #2 Tracking template setup within your Google Ads account(s)

Google makes it easy to track all ad clicks using their account level tracking template.  By applying this template at the account level, all clicks will pass the necessary information for Wicked Reports to track and attribute clicks to leads and sales.

Here is how to apply the tracking template to your Google Ads account:

1. Log into Google Ads
2. Navigate to Settings 
3. 
4. Click on Account Settings 

6. Click on the tracking template field and paste in the tracking template provided.

7. Auto-tagging set to Yes.

8. Click Save

9. Click the Test button and Google will randomly select 10 URLs and verify the tracking template will work.

Congratulations, at this point, all Google ad clicks will have the necessary information the Wicked Reports tracking script needs to track and attribute.

Step #2 Tips:

• Have a Discovery Campaign with a Product Feed subtype?
  Google's API does not currently support this campaign subtype. So, we're unable to automatically pull Discovery Campaigns with a Product Feed subtype from their API. However, by setting up manual UTMs for this campaign, and manually adding campaign costs into Wicked, you can get still get this subtype into Wicked. Please reach out to our support team if you need assistance on this.
• If you have other UTMs in the Account Settings > Tracking Template section, append them to the end of the Wicked Tracking template.
• Redirect links will normally pass the tracking template parameters through to the final URL.  But you have to verify this is happening, and if not, update the redirect software setting to allow "UTM/Link parameter pass-through".  Most redirect software has this option.  This is a must, it will cause huge data accuracy issues if the correct tracking template parameters do not make it to the final post-redirect page that has our tracking script.
• Ads running to YouTube, your Facebook Groups, your Instagram profile, or anywhere else, can sometimes be tracked using Wicked Redirect links. This is an advanced use case, contact support to see if we can pull this off (we have for others). 

Step #3 - Wicked Reports tracking script on all forms and destination URLs of your Google Ads

Now that we have the ad click info being sent to your pages, we need to have our tracking script on the pages ready to detect the clicks.

If you have Google Tag Manager deployed throughout your marketing stack, great news, follow these simple instructions here: https://help.wickedreports.com/wicked-tracking-code-with-google-tag-manager

Those of you without Google Tag Manager can find instructions in this section: https://help.wickedreports.com/setup#utm-and-tracking-setup

Step #3 Tips:

• Any page can be tested for Wicked tracking scripts using the tracking page validator https://help.wickedreports.com/tracking-validation
• When a page has embedded form or order form technology, we need the tracking script in that tech also, or you need to use the thank you page hack https://help.wickedreports.com/using-the-thank-you-page-hack-to-capture-optin-and-order-actions
• Reach out to your onboarding specialist if you have a tricky tech stack - we’ve seen it all and can set things up for you when it’s challenging - just ask.

Push Wicked Lead Conversion into Google Offline-Conversion via gclid

If you’d like to see your Wicked Reports attribution conversions and revenue inside of Google Ad Manager, active the Wicked Google Conversion Optimizer: https://help.wickedreports.com/google-conversion-optimizer-settings

 

YouTube

Everything in this section applies to YouTube, but there are also some additional considerations and resources available:

• https://help.wickedreports.com/what-youtube-ads-can-wicked-reports-track
• https://blog.wickedreports.com/an-easy-way-to-track-youtube-leads
• https://blog.wickedreports.com/how-to-target-your-youtube-leads-using-search-history

We can also track YouTube discovery ads that point to YouTube channels that then point to hosted lead capture pages.  This is an advanced, detailed process - talk to your onboarding specialist for details.

Troubleshooting

• If you have followed the steps above and your clicks, leads, and sales are getting attributed to Google Ads, but NOT lining up to costs, it is possible that your UTMs are being set at the campaign, ad group, or ad level. UTMs at the lower Google ad account levels will override account-level UTM settings.  You can check and fix this situation here:  https://help.wickedreports.com/verify-no-tracking-below-google-adwords-account-level
• Sometimes the wrong Google Ads account(s) get picked during setup.  You can verify which Google ad accounts are connected to your Wicked Reports account here:  https://help.wickedreports.com/verify-the-correct-google-adwords-account-is-authorized
• If your Google Ads costs do not match Wicked costs for the same campaigns but are only slightly off, please check if you are using keywords on your Google Display Ads or use automatic targeting in your Google Display Ads. If you are using these, the ad costs will not match between Google and Wicked but will only be slightly different. This is normal behavior and will not significantly impact your reporting.
• With the recent update to our tracking template, we have now made it possible to natively track Google Smart campaigns along with Performance MAX campaigns. Forget about uploading cost and clicks data manually anymore. You should be able to see the cost and clicks coming in from Google into the ROI report after switching to the latest tracking template mentioned above.
• If you have a Discovery Campaign with the subtype of product feed, then your Google Ads integration will not pull this campaign into Wicked Reports. That is because Google's API does not currently support that subtype. Here's a list of Google API's supported subtypes.
• If you are having tracking issues and you use Parallel Tracking you may need to modify the tracking template in Google Ads
  
  • If your tracking template does not have {lpurl} at the beginning and you have Parallel Tracking turned on, you may have tracking issues in Wicked. To resolve, you can add the Google Tracking code to the Final URL suffix. This will pass to the landing page and Wicked will start tracking again.