Setup guide
Connect your Google Ads account
Connecting Google Ads is what lets you ask about your ad spend in the same conversation as your catalog. Mercopilot reads your campaigns, your search terms, and your Shopping performance, then sets them against the products in your store. It is optional. Everything on the store side works without it.
- About 2 minutes
- No customer ID to look up
- Manager accounts bring their clients
Before you start
- A Google account with access to the Google Ads account you want to read. Standard or admin access is enough.
- A connected Shopify store, for the tool that matches ad spend to your products. The campaign reporting works without one.
- About two minutes. There is nothing to install, and your campaigns keep running throughout.
There is nothing to copy out of Google
Unlike the Shopify setup, you do not type an ID or paste an address anywhere. You sign in to Google, approve access once, and Mercopilot asks Google which accounts that sign-in can reach. If you manage several accounts under one manager account, all of them arrive together.
Worth knowing which Google login you use for Google Ads before you start. It is often not the same one you use for email.
Connect your Shopify store first
Ad data on its own answers half the question. The tool that matches Shopping spend to your products needs a connected store to match against, so run the Shopify guide first if you have not already.
The campaign and search-term reporting works without a store, so you can come back to this later if you would rather start with the ads side.
Open Ads in your dashboard
Sign in to Mercopilot and click Ads in the dashboard sidebar. The page lists every ad account you have connected, which is empty the first time you open it.
Click Connect Google Ads
The Connect Google Ads button hands you over to Google. Sign in with the Google account you use to manage your campaigns, then approve the access Google describes on the consent screen.
- Read your Google Ads reporting
- Campaign spend and returns, search terms, and Shopping performance by product. This is what every question about your ads is answered from.
- Make the campaign changes you approve
- Adding a negative keyword, pausing a campaign, or setting a daily budget. Only ever one at a time, and only after you say yes to that specific change.
Google grants one permission for Google Ads rather than a list you can pick from, so the approval covers reading and changing. What Mercopilot actually does with it is narrow, and the next step spells it out.
Pick the right Google account here. Google connects the accounts that login can reach, so signing in with a personal address that was never added to your ad account will find nothing.
Check what came back
Google sends you back to the Ads page, which says how many accounts it connected. Each one is listed with its Google customer ID and currency.
Manager accounts are connected too and carry a Manager tag. A manager holds no campaigns of its own, so nothing is reported on it. It is stored because it is what gives Mercopilot access to the accounts underneath it.
Connected an account you did not want? Disconnect removes the stored access. Your campaigns are untouched.
Ask your assistant something
That is the setup finished. In Claude or ChatGPT, with Mercopilot connected, try one of these:
- "Where is my Google Ads budget going to waste?"
- "Which campaigns are returning less than they cost?"
- "Am I spending on products that are out of stock?"
- "Which of my best sellers are getting no ad spend?"
Not connected to an AI client yet? The Claude guide and the ChatGPT guide each take about two minutes.
What you can ask for now
Two tools open up with a connected ad account, and both hand you findings you can act on rather than a report to read.
- Wasted and throttled spend
- Search terms you pay for that never convert, campaigns below the return you set, and profitable campaigns your daily budget is holding back. Each finding names the fix, so you can approve it in the same message.
analysis_ad_waste - Ad spend against your catalog
- Your Google Shopping spend joined to your own inventory and sales, so you can see money going to products that are out of stock or barely moving, and best sellers getting nothing.
analysis_ad_product_fit
Three changes can be made in Google Ads once you approve them: adding a negative keyword to a campaign, pausing a campaign, and setting a campaign's daily budget. Nothing runs on its own. Every change is proposed to you first, one at a time, and only happens when you say yes.
A campaign on a shared budget is left alone deliberately. Raising a budget several campaigns draw on would change all of them, which is not what anyone asking about one campaign means, so Mercopilot says so instead and sends you to Google Ads for that one.
Want to see the full picture of what the Google Ads integration covers? See the use cases and permissions.
If something goes wrong
- It said your Google account cannot reach any ad accounts
- The Google account you signed in with is not on any Google Ads account. Check which login your ad account uses, sign out of Google, and try again with that one. If someone else set the account up, ask them to invite your address in Google Ads under Admin, then Access and security.
- It connected, but only manager accounts were found
- Your login reaches a manager account with no advertising accounts under it, or none that are still active. Add the account that runs your campaigns to that manager in Google Ads, then connect again.
- It said Google has not approved the app for live accounts yet
- Your authorization worked and nothing is wrong on your side. Google reviews every application that reads live Google Ads data, and ours is in that queue. The connection starts working the moment approval comes through, with no action needed from you.
- You cancelled the Google screen by accident
- Nothing was connected and nothing was recorded. Click Connect Google Ads again and approve it this time.
- The connect link expired
- The ticket that ties the connection to your Mercopilot account lasts ten minutes, and the approval took longer. Start again from the Ads page in your dashboard.
- Your assistant asks which ad account you mean
- You have connected more than one, and the question did not say which. Name it, or say which store you mean if each ad account advertises a different one.
- The reports come back with no search terms
- Performance Max campaigns do not report search terms to anyone, Mercopilot included. The coverage note on every report says how much of your spend that accounts for, so you can tell an account with nothing wrong from one you cannot see into.
- You want to disconnect
- Click Disconnect next to the account on the Ads page. That drops the stored access and Mercopilot stops reading it. To withdraw the permission at Google as well, remove Mercopilot under your Google account, then Security, then Third-party apps.
Where to next
Still stuck? Email [email protected] and we'll walk you through it.
Stop asking “how many orders did I get?” Start asking what to fix first
Connect Shopify and Google Ads and see where the money is going — the best seller about to run out, the stock that has stopped moving, the search terms you pay for that never sell. Every fix comes with what it's worth, and getting it done is one word away.
- See the biggest wins first
- Finds it, then fixes it for you
- Catch lost sales before they happen