Not long ago, it was common for marketers and web analysts to spend the bulk of their day staring at Excel spreadsheets, manually collecting and organizing ad spend data across dozens of sources.
You had to go to each advertising account and export statistics on advertising campaigns, such as ad impressions, clicks, and costs, then export data from the web analytics system, and, finally, combine all the data manually.
Not an optimal use of time.
As it turns out, however, Google Analytics allows you to analyze the performance not only of Google Ads but also other advertising sources, such as Facebook, Bing, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and more—in a single dashboard.
In this article, I explain how to import costs from all advertising platforms into Google Analytics and how to set up performance metrics such as ROAS, Cost of Sale, and more.
1. Create a Data Set in Google Analytics.
First, create a Data Set to load with advertising cost data.
Go to the Google Analytics “Admin” section, select your account, and choose the “Property” into which you want to import data. Then select “Data Import.”
Next, click “Create” to create a new Data Set.
When choosing “Data Set type” select “Cost Data” and click on the “Continue” button:
Enter a name for your Data Set and select the required “Enabled Views.” Ad cost data will be available only for selected “Views.”
Next, in the settings, select the dimensions and metrics as shown in the screenshot. Set “Import Behavior” as “Overwrite,” and click on the “Save” button.
Done! You have created a Data Set, which can now be loaded with ad cost data from your chosen advertising platform. – Read more
