Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising offers one of the most efficient and affordable ways to reach your customers online. PPC reporting outlines the metrics of these campaigns so marketers can optimize them and make informed decisions moving forward.
In this guide, we cover pay-per-click reporting and why it’s important, how to make a custom report, and why you should include specific metrics in your PPC report.
Table of Contents
What Is PPC Reporting?
PPC reporting measures the effectiveness of pay-per-click advertising campaigns. It is the process of tracking and analyzing your online advertising campaigns to understand how your ads perform and whether they're achieving their goals. You can track key metrics that will help you determine whether to make necessary adjustments to improve your results.
It also helps keep tabs on what other companies are paying for similar ads, which can be important when planning how to bid.
A PPC report can be:
- Organic Scorecard: This shows how well each PPC keyword ranks in Google search results and includes data about your competitors' organic rankings.
- Top Keywords Report: This shows you the top-performing keywords over a particular period, which could help you find new opportunities to advertise on those terms.
- Keyword Position Report (KPR): This shows how often each keyword appears on someone's ad copy when they click through from Google Search result pages or display ads. It also indicates whether there are any negative keywords associated with these terms.
Why Do PPC Reports Matter?
Seventy-nine percent of marketers affirm that PPC is beneficial for their business. The data in your PPC reports is a gold mine as it can help you decide what to do with your advertising budget, how much time and effort to put into different campaigns, and even how much money to spend on ads overall.
Here are the other benefits of a PPC report:
- Improves PPC campaigns: Comprehensive reporting allows you to optimize your campaigns effectively. By analyzing the performance of each ad or keyword, you can identify strengths and weaknesses, leading to better results over time.
- Guides future PPC strategies: PPC reports show the effectiveness of different types of ads and determine the best times of the week, month, or year to deploy them.
- Ensures effective budget allocation: By assessing your campaign’s overall performance, you can make informed decisions on where to allocate your efforts and resources, thereby maximizing your budget.
- Measures ROI in the long run: PPC reporting delivers actionable data that tracks multiple campaigns over long periods and demonstrates how they affect the business’s bottom line.
- Explains your strategy to stakeholders: With data from PPC reports, you can be as transparent as possible with stakeholders and clients. You can share clear, easily understandable data about the efficacy of your ad spending, and what changes are needed for better results.
How To Build a Report on PPC Campaigns
When reporting on PPC agency campaigns, follow these steps:
Step 1: Definition
You need to know what you want to accomplish before building your PPC reporting strategy. Do you want to see how much revenue is coming in from AdWords? How many new leads are being generated from your ads?
Additionally, establish what the report will be used for, what metrics will be included, and the timeframe. Do you need to generate a comprehensive PPC report for stakeholders or clients? Are you evaluating ad variations and keyword strategies for your internal marketing team? Are you creating a budget pitch for accounting?
Once these details are nailed down, you can begin collecting data.
Step 2: Data Collection
To get the most out of your Google AdWords campaigns, you need clear, actionable metrics. Then, you can correctly measure your success and make decisions on how to improve your results going forward.
If you want to track everything from ad copy to landing page performance and conversion goals, look for PPC tools with all these features. If you're just looking for basic reports on how much money your ads are generating (or losing), try one of the following:
- Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel metrics: These provide insights into how well each campaign is performing overall. They also allow you to see which keywords drive conversions most effectively compared with other terms in those campaigns.
- AdWords Editor: Users can create dynamic ads without coding knowledge.
You should also understand the type of reporting available in your tool of choice: will it show you the amount spent per keyword? The number of clicks? Or both, and more? This will provide context into the success of your ad spending and the return on investment (ROI) from each campaign.
Step 3: Analysis and Data Visualization
Your PPC report should tell a clear story about your PPC strategy. Simple numbers aren’t enough; make your reports more engaging and easier to understand through charts and graphs. Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, and Google Data Studio are excellent tools for data visualizations.
PPC reports should culminate in clear takeaways about the value of your ad strategy and actionable insights into the following steps to improve performance. When you know how much time and money has been spent on each campaign, you can make informed decisions about which ones need more attention and resources.
What Data Do I Need for a PPC Report?
1. Campaign Overview
This includes tracking your campaign's impressions, clicks, and conversions.
- Impressions – These are the number of times your ad has been seen across Google or the Google Network (daily, weekly, monthly), which will show you if your ad is appealing and valuable to those who encounter it.
- Clicks – This metric shows where your audience tends to engage with your content: are they generally more attracted by text ads than image ads? Or do they prefer a website experience over being diverted elsewhere?
- Conversions – This metric allows advertisers to learn whether their click-through results in people taking specific actions, like signing up for an email list or purchasing a product.
You should also track what keywords were used when visitors clicked through from another website or app. This will give insight into which phrases are most effective at driving traffic, leading to more clicks overall.
2. Date Range
Date ranges are important to pay attention to when you're reporting on your PPC strategy. Report frequency depends on the metrics you are tracking and your overall business goals. Ensure you include the date range in each report, so viewers know when this data applies to them.
3. Ad Targeting
Breaking up your campaigns into different groups and sets will allow you to see what keywords or audiences worked well for you in the past. This way, you can use those keywords again in the future when marketing similar products.
PPC Reporting Quick Checklist
- What is the campaign name?
- What is the ad group?
- What is the start date and end date of the campaign?
- How much does the campaign cost?
- How many impressions daily?
- How many clicks?
- What is the cost per click?
- Which keywords drive the most traffic?
- What's the average click-through rate (CTR)?
- How many people have downloaded or purchased something after seeing an ad on Google or Facebook for that keyword phrase?
PPC Reporting Tips
A paid media reporting strategy should be thoughtfully put together to see how your campaigns are performing. Reports can help you identify areas that need improvement and where you’re getting the best results.
Here are some best practices:
- Understand the type of data you want to collect and how it will be used. For example, suppose you have an advertisement that runs on Google AdWords. In this case, several metrics are included in its report: clicks, impressions, cost per click, and ROI.
- Provide context for the metrics you will be presenting to your audience. Data does not exist in a vacuum — various circumstances surrounding your PPC campaigns will affect its performance. Include historical data, industry trends, and other details for a clearer understanding of your report.
- Schedule regular reports. PPC reporting is a continuous, long-term effort to track performance and respond to changing trends.
PPC Reporting: Takeaways
When creating your PPC report, start by thinking about what you need from it, which data it should contain, and how often you’ll be producing reports on your campaign performance. You can also think about whether other factors might affect how well an ad performs — for example, does the ad focus on a particular demographic? If so, does this demographic respond well? Does this demographic react differently than others?
The best PPC campaigns have a data-driven approach that maximizes the impact of their ads, making it easy to analyze data and make better decisions going forward.