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Understanding GA4 & Google Ads Integration

A common source of confusion when setting up new campaigns is: "We already linked our Google Analytics 4 (GA4) property to Google Ads. Why is the web property not showing up as a data source when creating a campaign?"

To understand why this happens, we have to look at how data flows between our application, GA4, and Google Ads.

The Core Architecture​

Think of GA4 and Google Ads as two separate systems with entirely different jobs:

  1. Google Analytics 4 (The Observer): Its job is to indiscriminately track everything happening across all our domains (jodapp.com, gig-partners.jodapp.com, etc.). It records every page view, button click, and scroll.
  2. Google Ads (The Spender): Its job is to spend budget to acquire specific, valuable actions. It does not care about 99% of the data GA4 collects. It only cares about "Conversions" (success states).

Because Google Ads only cares about success states, data does not automatically flood from GA4 into Google Ads just because the accounts are linked. A bridge must be explicitly configured.