Account Admin—Linking AdWords to Other Systems

Here’s a little challenge: Try surfing the Internet without touching a single Google service. It’s impossible! There are Google products all over the Internet, from Gmail to YouTube, AdWords to Google Play. Google even owns the “captcha” software which verifies that you’re a human!

Their dominance allows them to collect massive amounts of data and serve millions of users around the world.

AdWords advertisers benefit from this giant Google network for few reasons:

  • Obtain extra data and insight about your customers

    For example, with Analytics, you can view how long people stay on your site and whether they browse other pages on your website. With YouTube, you can view how many people finish watching your video ads.

  • Create and use remarketing lists

    Remarketing helps you reach people that have already visited your website, used your app or watched your YouTube videos. If they leave your website without buying anything, remarketing helps you reconnect through other relevant ads. You’ll build your brand awareness and engage with customers at timely touch points. Remarketing is an extremely profitable feature if employed correctly. We’ll cover this in a later chapter of the book.

  • Import Google Analytics goals and transactions.

    This is important for AdWords conversion tracking. For example, you can measure how many people who clicked on your ad and proceeded to purchase something from your site. You can measure whatever matters to you, such as the number of sign-up forms filled or the number of phone calls to your business placed. Read more in Chapter 6.

  • Create a call-to-action overlay on YouTube videos.

    These are the clever (or annoying) ads that pop up in the middle of a YouTube video. Some video advertisers use these to enhance the viewer’s experience. Say you were watching a video about new cosmetic products and the video really piqued your interest. The ad could direct you to the blog review or a link to purchase it.

Should I link my accounts? Which account should I link up to AdWords?

The decision to link accounts is simple:

  • If you sell apps through Google Play, then you should link your Google Play Developer account and your AdWords account.
  • If you publish videos (regular content or video ads) on YouTube, then you should link your YouTube and AdWords accounts.
  • If you’ve already set up your Analytics, then you should definitely link it up with AdWords too. (All websites should harness the power of Analytics. We need to sit and talk about this. Once you find a spare minute, please flip over to Chapter 5.)

How to link AdWords to other accounts?

First step: gather the bosses. Only “Administrative” AdWords accounts and “Owners” of the other account can set up these links. You can link accounts either from your AdWords account or from the other account. There are no benefits of doing one over the other, so just choose whichever is most convenient.

Here are the steps of doing so from AdWords:

  1. Sign in to your AdWords account.
  2. Click on the gear icon and click “Linked Accounts”.
  3. This page will display all the products that you can link your AdWords account to. Click on the product that you’re interested in.
  4. Click on the red button “+ Channel” or “+Account”, and follow the instructions on screen.
  5. The other owner will have to check his/her email inbox for the invitation and formally accept the request. They can also reject it and decline the amazing opportunity to share data.

Note

Don’t worry about sharing access to different accounts. Neither party can make changes to the other linked account. For example,

  • The AdWords account owner cannot edit anything on the YouTube channel, such as add, delete or modify videos.
  • The YouTube or Google Play account owner cannot edit campaigns or make any changes to your AdWords account.

Both parties can also cancel the link at any time. After you unlink the property, all data from the other account will no longer be visible. Any remarketing lists will be closed.