Quickstart: your first 20 minutes in Paid Lens

Paid Lens turns marketing and business data into a prioritized queue of recommended actions. This guide takes you from an empty workspace to your first reviewed recommendation. Budget about 20 minutes, most of which is waiting for the first data sync.

Step 1 — Create your workspace

Sign in with Google or Microsoft. Your workspace is created on first sign-in and is named after your organisation. Everyone you invite later joins this workspace.

Step 2 — Connect your first source

Start with the ad platform where most of your spend lives. The OAuth flow is read-only: Paid Lens never writes to, pauses, or edits anything in your ad accounts.

1. 1Open Connections and choose Google Ads.
2. 2Approve the read-only OAuth consent screen.
3. 3Select the ad accounts you want analysed.
4. 4Confirm the currency and timezone shown for each account.

Step 3 — Wait for the first sync

The initial backfill pulls 13 months of history so the platform has a baseline to compare against. Most accounts finish in 10–20 minutes; very large accounts can take up to an hour. You can close the tab — you get an email when the sync completes.

Step 4 — Read your first recommendation

Open the Decision Center. Each card shows what to change, the expected business impact, a confidence score, and the reasoning trail behind it. Expand the trail before approving anything — it lists the exact metrics that triggered the recommendation.