← Help & Support

Connect Google Ads

Connect your Google Ads account to Data Curator so your ad spend and campaign performance sit right next to the revenue they actually produced. Google Ads connects in one click — you authorize Data Curator from your Google account. There are no API keys to copy. Data Curator only ever reads your Google Ads data. It never creates, edits, pauses or deletes a campaign, ad or budget.

Before you start

• You'll need a Data Curator account with permission to add platform accounts to your organization.
• Sign in to the Google account that has access to the Google Ads account you want to connect.
• Set up a passkey on that Google account first — see below. It takes a couple of minutes, but it isn't usable immediately, so it's worth doing before you sit down to connect.

Google now requires a passkey

From August 5, 2026, Google requires a passkey on the Google account that authorizes access to Google Ads data. This is Google's change, not ours, and it applies to every tool that connects to Google Ads — not just Data Curator. A password with 2-step verification (authenticator codes or SMS) is no longer enough on its own.

If your Google account doesn't have a passkey yet, Google will stop and ask you to create one partway through connecting.

Set one up before you start:

1. Go to g.co/passkeys while signed in to the Google account you'll use.
2. Click Create a passkey and follow the prompts on your device.

A new passkey isn't usable straight away. Google applies a short security delay before a newly created passkey can authorize sensitive actions — usually a day or two, and in some cases up to a week. So create it ahead of time rather than in the middle of connecting.

A couple of things that trip people up:

• "Your admin has not enabled passkeys for sign in" is fine. On a Google Workspace account you may see this notice. It only means you can't replace your password with a passkey when signing in. You can still create a passkey and use it here, and no change from your Workspace administrator is needed.
• This matters again if you ever reconnect. If your connection is disconnected or your access is revoked later, reconnecting means authorizing again — and the passkey requirement applies then too. Keeping a passkey on the account means a reconnect stays a two-minute job.

Connect Google Ads

1. In Data Curator, open Settings → Platform Accounts (the gear icon in the top-right, then Platform Accounts on the left).

2. Click + Connect Platform, then choose Google Ads.

3. Click Connect Google Ads. You'll be taken to Google to authorize Data Curator.

4. Review the access request and approve it.

   Google's screen will mention editing and deleting. That wording is Google's, not ours: Google Ads offers apps a single all-or-nothing permission with no read-only version, so every reporting tool has to ask for the same one. Data Curator only reads. It pulls your campaigns, ads and daily performance figures and writes nothing back, so nothing it does can change what your account spends.

5. Tick every Google Ads account you want to connect, then click Apply Selection. (Customer IDs and account names fill in automatically — there's nothing to type.)

6. You'll land back in Data Curator and the import starts automatically.

Connecting more than one account

You can connect as many accounts as you like at once — the picker lists every Google Ads account your Google login can reach, so just tick them all and apply. Each one becomes its own platform account and syncs independently, and they all share the single Google authorization you just granted (so re-authorizing one re-authorizes them all).

Two things worth knowing about that screen:

• Accounts you've already connected appear pre-ticked. Your selection represents the full set of accounts you want connected — not just the new ones you're adding.
• Unticking an account that's currently connected will disconnect it. Its access is revoked and it stops syncing. Data Curator asks you to confirm first and lists exactly what's about to be disconnected, and you can always reconnect it later.

Manager accounts (MCC) won't appear in the list. Performance data lives on the individual ad accounts underneath a manager account, so the picker shows only those.

What comes across

• Campaigns, ad groups, and ads — your account structure, including status.
• Daily performance — impressions, clicks, cost, and conversions, broken down by day.
• Up to the last 24 months of history on the first import, so your trends have something to sit on.

Once the first import finishes, new data flows in on its own — your campaign structure refreshes through the day and performance figures update hourly. There's nothing to re-import.

Where to see it

Open Ads (Google) in your dashboards to see spend, impressions, clicks, CTR, and CPC — alongside the revenue your campaigns actually drove.

Read-only, always

Data Curator only ever reads your Google Ads reporting data. We never create, edit, pause, or delete campaigns, budgets, or anything else in your account. Our use of Google Ads data follows the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

You can disconnect at any time from Settings → Platform Accounts, or revoke Data Curator's access directly from your Google account permissions.

Need a hand?

Click the Ask Data Curator button inside Data Curator for instant answers, or reach our support team at support@datacurator.co and we'll get you running.