Reconciling your Google Ads spend

Knowing how many visitors come from an ad is useful. Knowing what it cost per conversion is more so.

In short

Connect your Google Ads account and Pulsar shows cost, clicks and conversions next to your audience. Reading is done read-only, nothing is ever written to your account.

Connecting the account

Enter the ten-digit ID of the advertising account, then authorise reading. Two routes exist: the account owner authorises Pulsar directly, or they add a Pulsar address as a read-only user.

We favour the second for your clients' accounts: the role granted is visible to them and revocable at any time, from their own interface.

Turning on auto-tagging

In Google Ads, check that auto-tagging is on. Without it, destination addresses carry no marker, and your paid clicks will be counted as organic traffic.

Also check that no redirect on your site strips the parameters from the address. A redirect from the root to a localised version, for instance, loses them if it is badly written.

Auto-tagging does not pass the campaign name, only a click identifier. The campaign names shown in Pulsar therefore come from the advertising account, not from measurement.

Why clicks and visits differ

Google counts a click on the ad. Pulsar counts a visit recorded on your site. A click followed by an abandon before loading, a blocker or an immediate return exists for one and not for the other.

A gap of five to fifteen per cent is normal. A gap of half signals a problem: slow page, redirect, or missing tagging.