What the client Google Ads tab shows

Ads & Analytics → Google Ads shows a client's Google Ads account inside ContentForge. It's also where Zeus reviews the account and builds new campaigns. Reading the account and adding negatives is free. Only your agency team sees it; client portal logins don't.

How to open it

1. Connect Google and link the client's Google Ads account. See How to connect Google and link each client's properties.
2. Open the client and click Ads & Analytics → Google Ads.
3. Pick a sub-tab. For Performance, Settings, Search Terms, Ads and Assets, choose the Campaign and the date range at the top (default Last 30 days).

With no account linked, the tab shows No Google Ads Account Connected. You can still click Build a campaign with Zeus, which starts by asking which account is the client's.

The sub-tabs

• Zeus Review: Zeus's findings on wasted spend and missed opportunities, with fixes you can apply. See How the Zeus Ads Review works.
• Build campaign: the guided campaign builder. See How to build a Google Ads campaign with Zeus.
• Performance: see below.
• Settings: the chosen campaign's settings, read-only.
• Search Terms: what people actually typed before clicking an ad, with Add as negative.
• Ads: each ad with its headlines, descriptions, Final URL, ad strength and its clicks, impressions, CTR, cost and conversions.
• Assets: Sitelinks, Callouts, Structured Snippets, Call Assets and Images.

Performance

• Campaign Performance: Clicks, Impressions, cost, Conversions, CTR, Avg CPC, Cost/Conv. and three share figures:
  • Impr. Share: of all the times the ad could have shown, how often it did.
  • Impr. (Top) %: how often it showed above the normal results.
  • Impr. (Abs. Top) %: how often it was the very first ad.
• The Conversions per day chart (see below).
• Ad Groups: each ad group with its status and the same numbers.
• Keywords by Ad Group: each keyword with its Match Type (Exact, Phrase, Broad), status and numbers.

Conversions per day chart

The chart shows each day as a faint bar and the 7-day average as a line, for the chosen campaign (or the whole account when none is chosen).

• Switch between Conversions, Clicks, Cost and Cost / conv., and between 60 days and 90 days.
• Last 30 days and Previous 30 days at the top right are the totals for each period. Cost per conversion is total cost divided by total conversions, never an average of daily numbers.
• Each numbered dashed line is a day when changes were made from ContentForge, such as "8 negative keywords added", "Budget changed", "Ad extras added", "Conversion tracking set up" or "New campaign created". The list under the chart says what each number was. Changes that were undone aren't shown.
• When the latest change has at least a week on each side, two dashed lines show the average before it and since it. Green means better, red means worse. Cost has no better or worse, so it's blue.
• Hover over the chart, or click it and use the arrow keys, to read any day.

Daily numbers are saved, so opening the tab doesn't ask Google again more than every few hours. The chart ends yesterday, since today is still filling in. Google keeps adding late conversions to past days for a few weeks, so the last 30 days can still go up a little.

Settings sub-tab

• Daily Budget and Delivery Method.
• Bidding Strategy (for example Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, Manual CPC), with the Target CPA or Target ROAS when there is one.
• Networks: Google Search, Search Partners and Display Network, each on or off.
• Locations: the places targeted and excluded, or "No location targeting set".
• Ad Schedule: days and hours, or "All hours (no schedule set)".
• Campaign Dates: Start Date and End Date ("No end date" when it runs on).

Search Terms and negative keywords

1. On Search Terms, find a search you don't want to pay for. Status shows whether it's already Added as a keyword, Excluded, or Blocked.
2. Click Add as negative.
3. Edit Block searches with if you like (up to 80 characters).
4. Choose Exact (only this search) or Phrase (any search containing it).
5. Choose Whole campaign or This ad group only.
6. Click Add negative.

ContentForge checks first. If the negative would block one of the campaign's own keywords, or a search that brought a conversion in the last 30 days, it stops and says why, for example "Not added: it would block your keyword "emergency plumber"." Change the words or match type, or click Add anyway. Each negative is logged under Changes applied in the Zeus Review, where you can undo it.

Conversion tracking

If the account isn't counting form fills and calls, a card above the sub-tabs offers to have Zeus set it up. See How to set up Google Ads conversion tracking with Zeus.

Examples

• Stop paying for job seekers: on Search Terms, "plumber jobs near me" has cost $40 with no leads. Add as negative, change it to "jobs", pick Phrase and Whole campaign.
• Did last month's fixes work?: on Performance, switch the chart to Cost / conv. and 90 days. The dashed line for "12 negative keywords added" shows the average before and since.
• Is the ad showing at the top?: a low Impr. (Abs. Top) % with a high Impr. Share means the ad shows, but usually below other advertisers.

Limits and what it can't do

• Everything except Add as negative is read-only here. Make other edits in Google Ads, or through Zeus's fixes in the Zeus Review.
• Adding negatives is limited to 10 a minute and 200 a day per agency.
• A negative keyword is at most 80 characters.
• Google Ads data depends on ContentForge's Google Ads access being approved by Google. If accounts or numbers don't load while Analytics works, contact support.

Who can use it

Agency people with the Clients tool, for the clients they can reach. Client people never see Google Ads.

Troubleshooting

• "Google Not Connected": nobody in the agency has connected Google. The Owner or an Admin connects it in Settings → Google Connection.
• "This Google Ads account isn't active — reconnect or pick another": Google says the linked account is not yet enabled or has been deactivated. Turn it back on in Google Ads, or click Pick another account and link the client's active account. ContentForge checks it again once a day and the note goes away when Google can open it.
• "No Google Ads Account Connected": link the account in Client → Settings → Google Integrations → Edit → Google Ads, or start Build a campaign with Zeus.
• "Select a campaign to view performance data.": pick a campaign from Campaign at the top.
• "No search terms found for this campaign in the selected date range", "No ads found…", "No assets found for this campaign.": pick a longer period or another campaign.
• "Not added: it would block …": see "Search Terms and negative keywords" above.
• "Campaign, ad group (for an ad-group negative) and a keyword of up to 80 characters are required": the text is empty or too long.
• "Google Ads asked us to slow down for a moment. Nothing was changed — try again in a minute." or "Google Ads' daily limit for this account's API access has been reached…": wait and try again (the daily limit resets daily).
• "You're going too fast — try again in …": the agency hit the limit on adding negatives. Wait the time shown.
• "No active Google connection": the Google sign-in stopped working. Click Reconnect Google in Settings → Google Connection.