How to Connect Claude to Google Ads and Meta Ads (2026 Guide)

How do I connect Claude to Google Ads and Meta Ads in 2026?

Both platforms now ship official, first-party MCP servers, and setup takes under an hour for either one. They're built differently, though, and that difference matters before you start:

• Google Ads MCP is read-only and runs on your own machine (or a Cloud Run instance you deploy) — it is not a hosted endpoint Claude connects to remotely. You add it to Claude Desktop's local config file, the same way you'd add any stdio MCP server.
• Meta Ads MCP is a hosted, remote server at mcp.facebook.com/ads. You add it through Claude's Connectors UI the normal way — paste the URL, authorize, done — and it can write (create campaigns, update budgets), not just read.

Below are both setups, followed by a decision section on when the free official path is enough and when it isn't.

Step-by-step: connect Claude to the official Google Ads MCP server

Google shipped its official MCP server for the Google Ads API on April 28, 2026 — read-only by design, so it can report on every metric, budget, and status in your account but can't pause a campaign, change a bid, or create an asset. It exposes exactly three tools: list_accessible_customers, search (Google Ads Query Language against campaigns, ad groups, keywords, and metrics), and get_resource_metadata.

1. Apply for a Google Ads developer token in the Google Ads API Center if you don't already have one. If you're starting from scratch, budget 1–2 business days for approval.
2. Create a Google Cloud project and enable the Google Ads API on it. Set up OAuth credentials — either a client ID/secret pair, or application default credentials via gcloud auth application-default login if you'd rather not manage a client secret.
3. Install and configure the server. It's self-hosted, not a remote endpoint: run it locally with pipx, or deploy it yourself on Cloud Run. For local use, open Claude Desktop's Settings → Developer → Edit Config and add:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google-ads-mcp": {
      "command": "pipx",
      "args": ["run", "--spec", "git+https://github.com/googleads/google-ads-mcp.git", "google-ads-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "GOOGLE_PROJECT_ID": "<your-project-id>",
        "GOOGLE_ADS_DEVELOPER_TOKEN": "<your-developer-token>"
      }
    }
  }
}

1. Fully restart Claude Desktop. Quit the app (Cmd-Q on Mac), don't just close the window — closing the window leaves the old config loaded.
2. Test it. Ask Claude: "List my accessible Google Ads accounts, then show cost and conversions by campaign for the last 14 days." If it answers, the connection's live.

Total time, assuming your developer token is already approved: 30–60 minutes.

Step-by-step: connect Claude to the official Meta Ads MCP server

Meta launched its Ads AI Connectors — including the official MCP server — on April 29, 2026. Unlike Google's, this one's a real remote connector: no local install, no config file editing.

1. Copy the server URL: https://mcp.facebook.com/ads. Don't connect to unofficial mirrors or third-party "Meta MCP" wrappers — this is the only endpoint Meta operates directly.
2. In Claude, go to Settings → Connectors, click +, then Add custom connector.
3. Paste the URL and click connect. Claude negotiates the OAuth handshake automatically — you'll be sent to Facebook to authorize.
4. Authorize your Meta Business account and pick which ad accounts and Pages to grant. Meta's connector fully inherits Meta Business Suite's permission model: read-only, read/write, or read/write/financial (budget changes) — all revocable any time from Business Integrations. Start read-only unless you specifically need Claude to make changes.
5. In a chat, click + → Connectors and enable Meta Ads for that conversation.
6. Test it: "Show me my Meta ad accounts and spend by campaign for the last 7 days."

The connector spans 29 tools across five areas: campaign creation and management, product catalog for commerce (the largest group, 10 tools), account/Page lookups, tracking and dataset health (pixel and Conversions API diagnostics), and insights/benchmarks. It's free during the current beta; Meta hasn't announced post-beta pricing.

One caveat worth flagging: it's write-capable, which means an ambiguous prompt can change a live budget. Start every new setup on read-only permissions and only widen access once you trust the workflow.

How Claude's remote connectors actually work (and why setup is this easy)

The reason Meta's connector is a two-minute "paste URL, click connect" while Google's needs a config file and a developer token comes down to transport and auth, not effort on Meta's part.

Claude's remote MCP connectors run over Streamable HTTP (the legacy HTTP+SSE transport is being phased out) and authenticate using OAuth 2.1 with Dynamic Client Registration (DCR, RFC 7591). DCR means Claude registers itself with the server's OAuth authorization endpoint at connection time — no one has to manually create an OAuth app, generate a client ID, or exchange a secret in advance. That's the mechanism that makes "hand someone one URL" work.

Google's server doesn't use this path at all: it's not a remote HTTP server Claude connects to over the internet, it's a local process Claude Desktop launches on your machine (or one you deploy yourself). That's why it needs a config file instead of a connector card — there's no OAuth handshake with Claude to negotiate, because Claude isn't calling a server, it's calling a program.

Plan requirements. Custom connectors via remote MCP work on every Claude plan — Free, Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise. The only gate is connector count: Free is capped at one custom connector active at a time; paid plans have no cap. For a workflow that only ever needs Meta's server, Free technically works. The moment you want Meta and Google and anything else connected simultaneously, you need Pro or above.

The one hard infrastructure requirement: your remote MCP server has to be reachable over the public internet. If it's behind a firewall or on a private network, you allowlist Anthropic's IPs to keep the connection outbound-only. This is why Meta's hosted server "just works" and a self-hosted server behind your VPN needs extra network configuration.

Which path should you pick: official MCPs or a paid multi-client MCP?

The official servers are the right call if you run one advertiser's accounts and want reporting or campaign changes without leaving Claude. They get harder to justify once "one advertiser" becomes "several clients across several platforms" — at that point you're maintaining a local Google Ads MCP process per machine, a separate Meta connector authorization per Business account, and no shared workspace boundary between clients.

That's the gap SharpMatter (our product — full disclosure) is built for. It's a single remote MCP server that bridges Meta Ads, Google Ads, TikTok Ads, Microsoft Ads, GA4, and Stripe, with an isolated workspace per client: each client's connected accounts, custom instructions, and conversation history are walled off, and you switch clients mid-conversation just by asking — Claude calls the tool, you don't touch a config file. It's read-only, OAuth-based (also OAuth 2.1 with dynamic client registration, same mechanism described above), and priced by client count starting at $49/mo. See SharpMatter for agencies for the agency setup.

If you're a single in-house team running Google or Meta and nothing else, the free official servers are genuinely the better first move — no reason to pay for capability you won't use. If you're an agency, the official servers don't have a concept of "client" at all; you're back to re-authorizing and re-configuring per account, and there's no workspace boundary keeping Client A's spend data from surfacing in Client B's conversation.

Sources

• Google Ads MCP: The Complete Guide (2026), Soku — release date, tool list, read-only architecture, deployment
• Google Ads Official MCP: How to Connect Claude (Get Ryze) — setup steps, config JSON, developer token timeline
• Official Meta Ads MCP for Claude: All 29 Tools (Pasquale Pillitteri) — server URL, tool breakdown, permission model, beta pricing
• Meta Ads + Claude MCP (Passionfruit) — launch date, connector mechanics
• Get started with custom connectors using remote MCP (Claude Help Center) — plan availability, connector limits, reachability requirement
• Building custom connectors (Claude Developer Docs) — transports, OAuth spec versions, Dynamic Client Registration