Connect Google Ads
Connecting Google Ads to Tapper is a Google sign-in followed by picking accounts from a list. You never type an account number, and there is nothing to approve inside Google Ads. What Tapper writes into the account depends on your workspace's products: Block sets up tracking and exclusions in Google Ads; Lift only sets up nothing in the account when you connect.
Before you start
- You need to be a workspace Owner or Admin. See Only a workspace owner or admin can connect an account.
- Sign in with a Google login that can open the Google Ads account, directly or through a manager account. Tapper lists only the accounts that login can reach.
- Your product choice, Block + Lift or Lift only, decides what Tapper writes into the account (see below). You can change it until you connect an ad account. After that, changing products goes through Tapper (see Choose your products: Lift only or Block + Lift).
Where you start
- New workspace: the wizard's Connect an ad account step.
- Existing entity: on the entity page, click Add another entity in the header, or Add account on the Google protection tab, or Connect Google Ads when that tab is empty. Each opens Add an account with two steps, Choose platform and Choose accounts. Despite its name, Add another entity adds an ad account to this entity; it does not create a new entity. Details in Add another ad account to an entity.
From here the steps are the same.
Steps
1. Sign in with Google
- On the Google Ads row, click Continue with Google.
- A popup opens. If your browser blocks popups, the sign-in runs in the same tab instead.
- Pick the Google account and accept what Google asks for: your email address and access to your Google Ads accounts through the Google Ads API, kept so Tapper can keep working when you are not signed in to Tapper. Tapper uses this to list your accounts, read campaign structure and metrics, apply the Lift fixes you choose and, with Block, write its tracking template and exclusions.
- The popup closes itself and Tapper moves on to the account list. The sign-in is held for 30 minutes while you pick accounts.
2. Choose the accounts
The page is titled Choose the accounts to protect (Lift only: Choose the accounts to connect).
- Find your accounts. The list is every Google Ads account the sign-in can reach. A manager account (MCC) is expanded into its client accounts; the manager account itself is never listed. Each row shows the account name and its ID. Use Search accounts by name or ID if the list is long; type an ID as digits only, without dashes.
- Tick each account Tapper should work on.
- Click Continue (in the wizard of a Block + Lift workspace, where more setup steps follow) or Finish (when adding to an entity, or in the wizard of a Lift-only workspace).
3. Wait for linking
Linking runs in the background and takes up to 90 seconds. You then see one of these:
- Success: Google Ads connected for one account, or 2 Google Ads accounts connected. Click Continue or Done.
- Partial: 1 account connected, 1 did not, with a list of each failed account and its reason. Depending on why they failed, the page offers Retry the failed accounts or Reconnect Google Ads (a fresh sign-in). You can also carry on with Continue with the connected accounts or Done with the connected accounts.
- Taking long: This is taking longer than usual. Click Keep waiting or move on; the accounts show up on the entity's Google protection tab when they are ready.
What Tapper writes into your Google Ads account
| Workspace products | What happens at link time |
|---|---|
| Block + Lift | Tapper reads your existing account-level tracking template and replaces it with its own, creates its conversion actions, user lists and audiences (all named "Tapper - ..."), syncs your campaigns and queues a check that your campaign targeting matches your detection rules. Disconnecting restores or clears your own template. |
| Lift only | Nothing is written: no tracking template, no conversion actions, no lists or audiences. Tapper backfills metrics and runs its first check later (see below). |
The full list of objects, and what happens to them on disconnect, is in What Tapper creates in your Google Ads account.
On a Lift-only workspace, an account that is already live in another Tapper workspace is refused. Disconnect it in that workspace first, then connect it here.
Your Google Ads customer ID
The Google Ads customer ID (also called the account number) is the 10-digit number that identifies one Google Ads account. Google Ads writes it as xxx-xxx-xxxx and shows it at the top left of every page, next to the name of the account you are viewing. The number at the top right, above your email, is the account you signed in through, which can be a manager account; the two match only when you sign straight into a single account. Tapper shows the same 10 digits, without dashes, as the Account ID on each connected account card on the Google protection tab. You never type it to connect. You do need it when you file a refund claim with Google, which asks for the 10-digit ID (see Request a refund from Google Ads for invalid clicks).
What happens next
- In the wizard, the next step is Install website monitoring (Block + Lift) or, on a Lift-only workspace, the wizard finishes and takes you to Lift.
- On the entity, the Google protection tab lists the account under Google Ads accounts with the chip Connected, its Account ID and a Manage campaigns button.
- On the Manage campaigns sub-tab, each Search, Display, Shopping, Demand Gen and Performance Max campaign has a Protection switch, on by default. Switch it off to leave a campaign out (see Choose which campaigns Tapper protects). Lift-only workspaces see the campaign list without the switch.
- Campaign structure is synced at connect and then every 6 hours. Refresh campaigns on the same sub-tab pulls it right away; with Block, campaigns found by a refresh get Tapper's exclusions queued.
- During a free trial blocking is off: Tapper records invalid clicks but does not block them, and the workspace shows the Monitoring only notice (see Monitoring-only mode: why nothing is blocked yet and what changes when blocking starts).
- On a Lift-only workspace, Lift's first check runs 45 minutes after connecting, and the first recommendations appear within a few hours.
For dashboard timings, see When your data shows up after connecting.
If something goes wrong
- The popup ends with Connection failed, Sign-in cancelled or Connection status unknown: close it and try again from Tapper. See Connection failed, Sign-in cancelled or Connection status unknown.
- The list says No ad accounts found or Couldn't load your Google Ads accounts: see No Google Ads accounts found, or the list did not load.
- An account fails with "The Google account you signed in with doesn't have access to ... in Google Ads. Reconnect Google Ads with a Google account that does.": sign in with a login that has access. See Google Ads says your sign-in has no access to the account.
- "Google Ads ... isn't active, so Tapper can't use it. Reactivate it in Google Ads, then connect it again.": reactivate the account in Google Ads first.
- "Google Ads is limiting requests right now, so ... wasn't connected. Try again in a few minutes.": wait a few minutes and click Retry (or Retry the failed accounts when other accounts did connect).
- "Google Ads signed Tapper out of ... Reconnect Google Ads to continue.": click Reconnect Google Ads and sign in again.
- This Google Ads account is already connected with "It is already on this protected entity, so there is nothing to add.": the account is already on this entity; open its Google protection tab.
- "Tapper couldn't finish connecting this account. Try again; if it fails twice, contact support.": retry once, then write to support@tapper.ai.
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