Google Ad Manager is a comprehensive hosted ad serving platform that streamlines your ad management, whether you deliver ads to websites, mobile webpages, mobile apps, games, or a combination. Ad Manager offers a complete toolkit to manage your ads for a multi-screen audience.
Add Google Ad Manager as a data source to visualize your Ad Manager reports in Looker Studio. The most popular Ad Manager report dimensions and metrics are available. These reports can be securely shared with others in your organization or publicly.
In this article:
Get started
Enable Looker Studio reporting for your Ad Manager network
- Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
- Click Admin
Global settings.
- Scroll down to "Report settings" and enable Reports in Looker Studio.
Only available in Google Ad Manager 360.
- Click Save.
Global settings.Add a new permission to Ad Manager user roles
- Sign in to Google Ad Manager.
- Click Admin
- Select the user role associated with users who need to create Looker Studio reports.
- Next to "Reporting," add the View and share access to reporting data in Looker Studio permission.
- Click Save.
The built-in "Administrator" and "Executive" roles already have this permission.
Add Ad Manager as a data source in Looker Studio
- Sign in to Looker Studio.
- On the Looker Studio home page, in the top left, click
Create, and then select Data Source.
- Select the Ad Manager connector.
- If prompted to grant Looker Studio access to your account, click AUTHORIZE.
You can revoke this access at any time.
- Click Available networks.
- Select the Ad Manager network you enabled, then select Historical as the report type.
- In the upper right, click Connect.
- The data source fields panel appears.
- The data source is now connected to your data set.
- In the upper right, click Create report to develop your first report.
Create, and then select Data Source.
Configure the data source
The data source fields panel is where you configure the data source by renaming fields and adding descriptions, adding calculated fields, and changing data types and aggregations. Learn more about working with data source fields.
Control who sees the data
At the top of the fields panel, you can change the data credentials. Credentials control who can see the data that this data source provides.
OWNER'S CREDENTIALS let other people view or create reports that use this data without requiring them to have their own access to the dataset.
VIEWER'S CREDENTIALS, on the other hand, require each user of the data source to provide their own credentials to access the dataset.
Learn more about data credentials.
Create a new report from the data source
To create a new report from the data source, follow these steps:
- In the upper right, click CREATE REPORT. The report editor appears.
- Click ADD TO REPORT.
- This action adds the data source to the report.
- You can now create charts and controls that get their data from this data source.
New to Looker Studio?
Take the Create a report tutorial. Or learn more about the report editor.
Tips for creating Ad Manager reports in Looker Studio
Your new Ad Manager data source allows you to visualize Ad Manager reporting data in Looker Studio. The most popular dimensions and metrics from the "Historical" report type in Ad Manager are available. Use the Ad Manager report template to get started quickly.
The "Ad Exchange historical" report type and the key-values dimension are not available.
Only the Total report metrics are included in Looker Studio reports. Use the Demand channel dimension field to see Ad server, AdSense, and Ad Exchange subtotals.
Share reports with other people with view-only or edit access. When sharing a report, the data source access credentials you choose determine what users can see in the report.
For optimal security, share reports with view-only access and use the viewer's data source credential. The "Viewer's credential" requires each report viewer to have Ad Manager access.
Permission to edit reports can allow any user to gain access to more than you intended to share. For example, if you share a report filtered by a particular advertiser, but grant edit access to users, they could remove that filter and see all of your data.
Common questions
Why is my Looker Studio report loading slowly?
How can I make my Looker Studio reports faster?
- Include fewer dimensions and metrics in your charts.
- Reduce the date range of your charts.
- Reduce the number of charts on each page of your report, or distribute large groups of charts across multiple pages. Each chart represents a report request to Ad Manager, so many charts compete for your network's allotted Ad Manager reporting resources.
- See also: Improve Looker Studio performance
Want to use this data source with different accounts? Try adding a data control.
The data control gives report viewers a way to select the account that provides the data they want to see in a report. This can eliminate the need to create separate reports and data sources for your various accounts. Learn more.