Ad Cost Uploader

Ad Cost Uploader (Google Sheets add-on)

Automatically upload your advertising cost data from Facebook Ads,
Microsoft Advertising and LinkedIn Ads to Google Analytics.

GET THE ADD-ON

Automatically download your advertising cost data from Facebook Ads, Microsoft Advertising and LinkedIn Ads and upload directly to Google Analytics.

Schedule daily uploads and upload historical data to get a complete overview. Preview and edit your uploads in Google Sheets if needed.

  • Easy setup
  • Daily uploads
  • Upload historical data
  • Automatically match UTM Parameters
  • Facebook Ads
  • Microsoft Advertising
  • LinkedIn Ads
INSTALL THE ADD-ON

Analyse your data in Google Analytics or Data Studio

Google ads Microsoft Advertising cost analyses

Easily upload your advertising cost data to Google Analytics. In Google Analytics you can analyse the results of your advertising accounts and compare the results with other traffic sources. You can also use this data in Google Data Studio to create more complete dashboards using the Google Analytics Data Studio connector.

Get started in minutes

Install the Google Sheets add-on and create a new Google Sheets spreadsheet. For each advertising source open the setup sidebar in the add-on menu and complete the steps to set the necessary settings from your advertising accounts and Google Analytics property. Watch the video to see a demo.

Setup

  1. Install the Google Sheets add-on
  2. Create a new Google Sheets spreadsheet
  3. Go to the add-on menu, select “Ad Cost Uploader” and then select an advertising source (e.g. Facebook Ads). Then select “Setup”.
  4. Authorize the add-on when asked.
  5. Choose an advertising source (e.g. Facebook Ads)
  6. Choose a Google Analytics property.
  7. Choose a Google Analytics data set as target for the data from the advertising source.
  8. Set a schedule to process the uploads daily.

If you need help, please contact us. We can schedule a Google Meet to talk you through the process.

After installing the add-on follow these steps to get started:

  1. Create a new spreadsheet (for each advertiser)
  2. Go to the add-on menu, select “Ad Cost Uploader” and then select an advertising source (e.g. Microsoft Advertising). Then select “Setup”.
  3. The first time you are asked to authorize the add-on.
  4. You are then asked to authorize the add-on to access your advertising source data (e.g. Microsoft Advertising).
  5. The first step now is to choose an advertising source (e.g. Microsoft Advertising) account. Choose one and click “Select and next”.
  6. In the next step you are asked to select a Google Analytics property. (All Google Analytics accounts and properties you have access to are shown in the drop downs). Make sure the Google account you are using for Google Sheets has access to the Google Analytics property you want to use. Choose one and “Select and next”.
  7. Select the Google Analytics data set to which you want to add the data. If you don’t have a data set, you need to create one in the Google Analytics interface. Choose a data set  and click “Select and next”.
  8. In the next step click on “set a schedule” a new dialog opens where you can set the schedule and add the advertising source to the schedule.

Google Analytics data sets can only be created via the Google Analytics interface.  Watch the video for instructions on how to create a data set.

The easiest way to create a setup for multiple advertisers or properties is to use a spreadsheet per advertiser, country or Google Analytics property. You can follow these steps:
1. Create a folder in your Google Drive (e.g. Ad Cost Uploader).
2. Create spreadsheets in this folder and name them after the advertiser or country.
3. Open the add-on in each spreadsheet and complete the setup for each applicable advertising source.
4. Don’t forget to add each source to your schedule to have the uploads executed daily.

More information

To match your uploaded data in Google Analytics, make sure you use UTM parameters in your advertising campaigns.

Microsoft Advertising offers auto-tagging to add the parameters in a consistent way to all your urls.

Facebook Ads has an option to automatically add parameters to your urls on the ad level.

The add-on tries to get the UTM tags from your ads, to get the correct values for the upload. When a parameter is unavailable a fallback value is used. You can overwrite this value per advertising source in the corresponding sheet (UTM parameter fallback).

You can also use the ‘find and replace’ function to change values. If for instance you have a Facebook campaign directed to you Facebook page. In the url tags you have “cpc” entered for the utm_medium parameter, you can then set a rule to change this to e.g. “sponsored content” to better match your other facebook ads. This if only a half solution, since the cost data won’t be matched with sessions in Google Analytics. The real solution is to add UTM parameters to every url.

Google Analytics Microsoft Advertising cost analysis

You can find your Microsoft Advertising cost data in Google Analytics under Acquisition -> Campaigns -> Cost Analysis.

You can set a schedule to upload your advertising data on a daily basis. For some advertising sources fetching your data requires multiple steps. Most of the time these steps are very fast, but these steps could take more than the available 6 minutes of runtime for the add-on. To overcome the risk of missing data, schedule the add-on to run every hour. At the start of each run the add-on checks if there is an ongoing process and continues this process if that is the case. The upload is completed only once a day. Once it is completed, the add-on will do nothing in the subsequent runs.

By default yesterday’s data is uploaded on each day the add-on runs. It is possible to upload multiple days each day by changing the lookback window.

Keep in mind that Google only allows you to add 90mb of data per date (+/- 750.000 rows of data), so don’t do more uploads for a specific date than necessary.

Select ‘Schedule’ in the add-on menu, this opens the schedule dialog. In the schedule dialog you can choose for which advertising sources the data must be uploaded on the schedule. You can set a schedule to automatically upload your data every day.

You can choose to let the add-on run every hour or only once a day. For some advertising sources fetching your data requires multiple steps. Most of the time these steps are very fast, but these steps could take more than the available 6 minutes of runtime for the add-on. To overcome the risk of missing data, schedule the add-on to run every hour. At the start of each run the add-on checks if there is an ongoing process and continues this process if that is the case. The upload is completed only once a day. Once it is completed, the add-on will do nothing in the subsequent runs.

You can select ‘Upload historical data’ in the add-on menu to upload data for any date range you want. This date range does not affect the daily uploads.

The upload process usually completes within the available 6 minutes of runtime for the add-on. In case a report is still pending after the add-on stopped running, you can resume the process later by selecting ‘resume’ in the add-on menu for the advertising source.

If you have a very extensive advertising account, don’t make the date range too long. Getting all UTM parameters from your url’s may take some processing time and Google Sheet add-on are limited to run for 6 minutes.

Keep in mind that Google only allows you to add 90mb of data per date (+/- 750.000 rows of data).

You can preview data by selecting ‘preview’ in the add-on menu for a advertising source. You are then prompted to enter a date range and you have the option to have the data checked against current dimensions in Google Analytics. The data for any source is displayed in the ‘PREVIEW’ sheet.

The column ‘Found UTM parameters’ indicates which UTM parameters where found for the upload. The column is is highlighted with red if no parameters are found to give you an overview where UTM parameters should be added.

You can edit the preview data if needed. Common case where this may apply are:

  • You have changed the UTM parameters of an ad and want to upload historical data based on the old UTM parameters.
  • You have a campaign which isn’t directing traffic to you website but to e.g. your Facebook page. You may want to change the dimensions in the upload to get more consistent data in Google Analytics.

You can upload data directly from the ‘PREVIEW’ sheet. Depending on the current advertising source, select that advertising source in the add-on menu and then select ‘Upload preview data’.

If the data in the ‘PREVIEW’ sheet is from another advertising source, then you see an alert.

The data is validated before uploading to make sure the right data formats are used.

The last column ‘ga:importBehavior’ can not be changed, any change made will be ignored.

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