Connect Google Ads to Claude: read your numbers and act

To connect Google Ads to Claude you need a connector: Claude does not talk to the Google Ads API on its own. You authorize Google once inside the connector, pick which accounts to include, paste the connector's address into Claude, and from then on you ask for cost, clicks, conversions and CPA in plain English and get the real numbers back. With write actions on, you can also pause a campaign, resume it, or set a daily budget from the same chat. This is the setup, the questions worth asking, and the limits that are specific to Google.

What you need before you start

Three things, and none of them is a developer.

• Access to the Google Ads accounts. Whatever you can open in the Google Ads interface today with the Google account you are about to authorize. If you work through a manager account, authorize with the login that has the manager access, not with one client login at a time.
• A connector that speaks MCP. MCP is the open standard Claude uses to call outside tools, explained plainly in what is MCP for marketers. The connector holds the Google authorization and exposes the account as tools.
• A Claude plan that supports custom connectors. Check the current plan comparison on Claude's own site, since plan features move.

You do not need a Google Ads API developer token, a Google Cloud project, or an API key. That work sits on the connector's side.

How to connect Google Ads to Claude, step by step

Step 1. Authorize Google. In the connector, click to connect Google and sign in through the normal Google screen. You are granting access, not handing over a password. The connector receives a token and never sees your credentials, and you can revoke it later from the connector's own settings or from your Google account.

If your accounts sit under a manager account (MCC), the authorization brings the whole tree in view. That is the point where most people discover they have twelve accounts and only care about four.

Step 2. Pick the accounts. Tick only what you want Claude to see. An agency with a long client list should connect the accounts it is actively working, not everything. A shorter list means shorter answers and less to explain when someone asks what the tool can reach.

Step 3. Add the connector in Claude. Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector → paste the address → authorize. For Vazante the address is https://vazante.app/api/mcp, and the walkthrough lives on the connect Meta Ads to Claude page, which covers Google in the same flow.

Step 4. Verify before you trust it. Ask for something you already know: "cost and conversions for account X, last 7 days, by campaign." Open Google Ads and compare. Do it for two or three accounts. Numbers that match on day one are what let you stop double-checking on day thirty.

The whole sequence takes minutes. The slow part is deciding which accounts belong in the list.

What you can ask

The Google Ads read tool returns spend, impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, conversions, conversion value and CPA. You can get those by campaign, by account, or by day. That range covers most of what a media buyer opens the interface for.

Questions that work well:

• "Cost, conversions and CPA by campaign for account X, last 30 days."
• "Compare last week with the week before, by day, for account X. Where did the change happen?"
• "Which campaigns have a CPA above US$ 60 in the last 14 days?"
• "Total spend across all connected Google accounts this month, by account."
• "Show conversion value and cost by campaign so I can see where the return is thin."
• "Clicks and CTR by day for the last two weeks. Did anything drop suddenly?"

The follow-up is where this beats an export. You ask about CPA, the answer names a campaign, you ask about that campaign by day, and you find the Tuesday it changed. Three sentences, one chat, no CSV.

Two habits make the answers better. Name the account and the period in the question, because ambiguity gets you a guess about which account you meant. And ask for the metric you actually judge on. "How is the campaign doing" invites a summary; "CPA and conversion value by campaign, last 14 days" gets a table.

What Claude can execute, and the guardrails

Reading is one thing. Letting a model change a live account is another, and it deserves the paranoia.

With write actions on, three things are possible on Google: pause a campaign, resume a campaign, and set a campaign daily budget. That is the list. It covers the two moves you make in a hurry, which is exactly when being able to do it from your phone matters.

Four safeguards sit around it.

• Writing is off by default. Nothing can change anything until you deliberately switch it on.
• A cap per action. You set the maximum a single action may set, for example a daily budget ceiling. A request above it is refused before it reaches Google.
• Confirmation in the chat. Claude shows the exact action, you say yes or no. Nothing runs on inference.
• A change log. Author, origin, and the state before and after, including the attempts that were refused.

And two real limits worth knowing before you plan around them:

• Google actions are campaign level only. No ad group, no keyword, no individual ad. If the fix is at ad group level, you are opening Google Ads.
• Shared budgets are refused. A campaign on a shared budget cannot have its daily budget set through the connector. That is deliberate: changing a shared budget quietly changes every campaign attached to it, and that is not a decision to make from a chat line.

How this differs from Meta

Same chat, different depth. Worth knowing so you do not expect symmetry.

The practical read: on Meta you can go deep and you can build. On Google you can see the whole account clearly and make the two moves that matter in a hurry. If you run both and want to compare them fairly, Meta and Google Ads in one dashboard is about the traps in that comparison, starting with the fact that a Google conversion and a Meta lead are rarely the same event.

When this replaces opening Google Ads, and when it does not

It replaces the interface for the questions you ask over and over: what did we spend, where are the conversions, which campaign moved, is anything above the CPA I care about. It replaces the Monday export entirely. It replaces the "hold on, let me check" you send a client and then forget for two hours, because now the check is one sentence long.

It does not replace Google Ads for the work that is actually inside Google Ads. Search terms and negatives. Keyword bids and match types. Ad group structure. Asset and extension edits. Audience setup, conversion tracking, attribution settings. Anything below campaign level.

And it is not a deliverable. A chat log is not a client report. The numbers are right and fast, but the client still wants something to open, which is what a panel or a document is for. Meta Ads reporting covers what belongs in that report; the connector just means you stop assembling it by hand.

Where to start

Connect one Google account, read-only, and run it for a week alongside how you already work. Ask the questions you would have opened the interface for and check them. When the numbers stop surprising you, add the rest of the accounts and decide, separately and on purpose, whether to turn writing on. Claude for paid ads covers that decision and the prompts worth keeping. The audit questions that return the most budget are in Google Ads prompts, and the same setup for the organic side is in connect Instagram to Claude.