If you run campaigns on both Google Ads and Meta, you know the Monday morning ritual. Log into Google Ads, export. Log into Meta Business Manager, export. Paste it all into a spreadsheet and hope the columns line up. By the time the numbers make sense, it is Tuesday.
This is tedious and expensive. According to Dataslayer's marketing reporting guide, 82 per cent of marketers spend five or more hours a week on manual reports, and automation typically saves five to ten hours a week. The reason is simple. When your numbers live in separate dashboards, you make decisions on fragments instead of facts.
In this walkthrough, we will connect both platforms to a single dashboard using Make (formerly Integromat). You will pull campaign data from both APIs every night, normalise it, and feed it into Looker Studio for a dashboard that refreshes on its own. A free Make account and a couple of hours are all you need.
What you need to build the dashboard
- A Make account (free tier works for single-account reporting)
- Google Ads account access (Manager or admin level)
- Meta Business Manager access with ad account permissions
- A Google account for Sheets and Looker Studio
Connect Google Ads to Make
In your Make dashboard, add a new scenario. Search for the Google Ads Reports app and select the Run a Campaign Report module. Authenticate with your Google Ads account and select the campaign fields you want to track: campaign name, impressions, clicks, cost, conversions, conversion value, and date.
Make's Google Ads Reports integration supports campaign, custom, and account-level reports. For a daily dashboard, set the date range to yesterday and schedule the scenario to run each morning.
Connect Meta Ads to Make
Add a second module to the same scenario using the Facebook Ads Campaign Management app. Select the Get Campaign Insights action and authenticate your Meta Business Manager. Choose the fields that match what you pulled from Google: campaign name, impressions, clicks, spend, conversions.
Make has a pre-built template for syncing Facebook Ads data to Google Sheets daily if you prefer to start from a template rather than build from scratch.
Normalise the data in Make
Here is where the magic happens. Google Ads calls it "cost" and Meta calls it "spend." Google counts conversions in one window, Meta in another. Use Make's Set Variable module to rename fields into a common schema:
Platform: "Google Ads" or "Meta Ads" Date: same format (YYYY-MM-DD) Campaign: campaign name from source Spend: cost (Google) or spend (Meta) Impressions: from source Clicks: from source Conversions: from source Cost per conversion: calculated field
This normalisation step is what makes the dashboard useful. Without it, you are comparing apples to slightly different-shaped apples.
Write to Google Sheets
Add a Google Sheets module set to Add a Row. Create a sheet with columns that match your normalised schema. Each time the scenario runs, Make appends one row per campaign from both platforms.
Use a separate sheet as a raw data store and another sheet with SUMIF formulas for your weekly and monthly aggregates. This keeps your dashboard fast even as data grows.
Connect to Looker Studio
Open Looker Studio and create a new report. Add your Google Sheet as a data source. Build a dashboard with:
- Total spend across both platforms (single number card)
- Spend by platform (bar chart)
- Cost per conversion by platform (comparison chart)
- Week-over-week trend (line chart)
- Campaign-level performance table
Looker Studio is free and refreshes automatically from the sheet. Your Make scenario runs every morning, updates the sheet, and the dashboard reflects the latest numbers by the time you open it.
Add alerts and optional extras
Once the base dashboard is running, you can extend it with Make's scheduling and notification modules. Set up a Slack message when spend exceeds a threshold, or a weekly email summary to stakeholders. The data is already flowing, so adding outputs is just dragging in a new module. For a deeper look at how attribution changes when you connect those dots, read our guide to unified ad attribution across Meta, LinkedIn and Google Ads.
A Monday without manual exports
Before automation, your Monday morning was spent exporting, reconciling, and hoping nothing got misfiled. After, it looks like this:
- Open one dashboard instead of two or three platforms
- See total spend, CPA, and ROAS across both channels in one view
- Compare Google Ads and Meta performance on the same metrics
- Spot budget shifts early. If Meta CPA jumps, you see it on Tuesday, not Friday
- Free 5 to 10 hours of team time per week
As the Cometly guide to unified marketing analytics puts it, the real cost of fragmented data is the revenue you never capture because you are too slow to identify what is working and scale it.
Where the merged numbers still drift from each platform
Once the scenario runs for a couple of weeks, you will notice something: the totals in your sheet do not exactly match what Google Ads and Meta each show on their own dashboards. That is not a fault in your Make setup. It is the two platforms measuring with different rulers, and knowing where they differ stops you from chasing phantom errors.
Google Ads defaults to a 30-day click-through conversion window, and conversions can be reported up to 90 days after the click if you have extended that window. Meta's standard attribution setting credits conversions up to 7 days after a click and up to 1 day after a view. A conversion Meta stopped counting last week can still land in Google's numbers next week, and neither platform's total is final until its own window closes.
| Where they differ | Google Ads | Meta Ads |
|---|---|---|
| Attribution window | 30-day click default, extendable up to 90 days | 7-day click plus 1-day view |
| When totals settle | Conversions keep arriving after the click; Google recommends ending report ranges at least 30 days back for complete data | Conversions keep arriving as click windows close, and modelled results update after the fact |
| Timezone | Reports in the account's timezone | Reports in the ad account's timezone |
Set both ad accounts to the same timezone, and judge performance on closed weeks rather than the last day or two. The sheet's job is to show direction early and totals accurately, and it does both once you stop expecting yesterday's number to be final.
How much does this cost?
Make's pricing starts free for 1,000 credits per month, which handles daily reporting for a single ad account. The paid plan at $9 per month covers 5,000 credits for multiple accounts. Looker Studio is free. The table below sums it up.
| Option | Monthly cost | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Make free | $0 | 1,000 credits, daily reporting for one ad account |
| Make paid | $9 | 5,000 credits, multiple accounts |
| Looker Studio | $0 | Dashboards and reports off the shared sheet |
| Supermetrics | From $39 | Pre-built connectors, no normalisation work |
Total cost for a functional multi-platform dashboard: roughly $9 per month and an afternoon of setup.
Compared to paid connectors like Supermetrics, which starts around $39 a month and climbs with the number of destinations, the Make-plus-Sheets approach gives you more control for less. The trade-off is that you configure the normalisation logic yourself, which is what this guide covers.
Frequently asked questions
Can I connect both Google Ads and Meta to one dashboard?
Yes. Both platforms expose APIs that Make connects to natively. A Make scenario pulls data from both Google Ads Reports and Facebook Ads Campaign Management modules, normalises the fields, and writes to a single Google Sheet that feeds a Looker Studio dashboard.
How much does it cost to automate ad reporting?
Make's free plan handles up to 1,000 credits per month, enough for daily reporting on a single account. The paid plan at $9 per month covers 5,000 credits, which handles multiple accounts. The only other cost is Looker Studio, which is free.
How many hours does automated reporting save?
Automating ad reporting typically saves five to ten hours a week, per Dataslayer's marketing reporting guide. The exact saving depends on how many platforms and reports your team compiles by hand.
Is Looker Studio enough or do I need something more powerful?
Looker Studio with native connectors is free and enough if you only need to visualise Google Ads and Meta data. It falls short when you need to cross ad spend with real sales from your CRM or apply custom business rules. That is where a custom build adds value.
Do I need a developer to set this up?
No. The marketing team can set up Make scenarios using the visual drag-drop interface. Make has pre-built templates for syncing Facebook Ads data to Google Sheets. The steps in this guide walk through the entire setup with no coding required.
Unified ad reporting is one of those changes that looks small on paper but changes how your team operates. Instead of spending Monday morning assembling numbers, you start the week with a dashboard that already has everything, and you spend your time deciding what to do about it.
This is something we do at Supernodes. If a unified ad dashboard sounds like something your team could use, speak with us about a two-week pilot. We audit your current setup, connect the platforms, and leave you with a dashboard that refreshes itself.