Build your own Google Ads dashboard with AI, without an agency

We advertise through Google. That means four places to keep track of: the campaigns in Google Ads, Analytics, Merchant Center and Search Console. For years I had external agencies handle that. Every time I ended up dissatisfied.

This article is about what I did instead, and how you can start yourself. You don’t need to be able to code. Neither can I.

Why it didn’t work with an agency

The pattern was always the same. A fee every month. A login to a portal I couldn’t make sense of at all, with so much information that I couldn’t see the wood for the trees. And meanwhile results that stayed behind.

The hard part is that in that situation you can’t judge what is going wrong either. You see figures, but you don’t know which ones matter. Every question you ask is an email to the agency. Sometimes with an extra invoice as the answer.

What I wanted instead

My thinking was simple: I want to understand it, and I want to be rid of agencies that cost me money every month. Three requirements came out of that.

• Only things I understand. Rather four figures I can explain than a hundred I have to take on trust.
• Only things I really want to see. Not a report because it’s possible, but an answer to a question I have.
• Being able to ask substantive questions. With a direct answer based on my own data, without an extra invoice.

That became my first cockpit.

Illustration with made-up figures. My first cockpit started this simply.

How to start yourself

You build this with Claude, in plain language. The order below works because at every step you have something you can already use.

1. Write down the questions you have every week. Am I making money on my ads? Are there more or fewer visitors? Have any products been disapproved? Am I being found more easily? Four or five questions is enough. This is the most important work, and it has nothing to do with technology.
2. Start with an export, not a connection. You can download figures from every Google screen. Give such a file to Claude and ask what is in it. A direct connection can come later; it takes more preparation and, for Google Ads, a separate application for access.
3. Have Claude build one screen. One tile per question, with one large figure and a sentence in plain language beneath it. Ask for a colour or label with it: going well, or needs action.
4. Ask questions of your own figures. Why did this campaign drop? What changed since last week? This is the difference from a portal: you get an answer instead of yet another chart.
5. Only add what you understand. Every addition to my cockpit is something I ran into along the way. If I can’t explain a figure, it doesn’t go on.

Where I am now

My cockpit today looks different and is a lot more extensive than that first version. But I understand every addition one hundred percent. It was, and still is, a learning journey: very visual, very tangible, and without an external agency.

What you should honestly know

• It takes time. An agency takes work off your hands. This doesn’t: you have to want to understand how your ads work.
• Claude can make mistakes. In the beginning, check every figure against Google’s own screen. If it holds up for a few weeks, you can rely on it.
• A dashboard doesn’t improve your campaigns by itself. It shows what is happening. What you do with that remains your decision.
• For large accounts a specialist can still pay off. The difference is that you then know what you’re asking for and can judge what you get back.

Where does such a cockpit run?

What Claude builds needs a place where it is reachable every day and where Claude can update it. That is the step I got stuck on myself, and the reason Waterbloom exists. This article puts the four ways of getting something online side by side, including the free ones.

Updated on 11 October 2026.