Anxious about how your campaigns are performing? Do you want to create compelling Google Ads Reports? If yes? You’ve landed at the right page! Follow our step-by-step guide to help you create informative business reports with ease and in no time.

Upon a complete walkthrough of the content, you’ll be able to create custom Google Ads Reports that match your business use cases and helps you draw crucial insights about your campaigns, the amount of money you’re spending, and lot more.

Table of Contents

Introduction to Google Ads

Google Ads Logo.
Image Source: Google Ads

Google Ads help organizations grow their business by setting advertisements about their products and services at multiple avenues controlled by Google. The most critical of these touchpoints are the search results that Google provides to the user. Google Ads also allows advertisers to exploit their web page-based advertisement spaces, which are part of Google partner network.

With Google Ads, users can generate reports and use its interactive dashboard to analyze the amount of money being spent across various assets, allowing them to optimize spends and maximize benefits. You can also create custom Google Ads Reports that meet your specific business use cases.

Google Ads uses a cost per click pricing model, and an automatic binding mechanism, that calculates pricing for a specific location and the keyword you want to target.

For further information on Google Ads, you can check the official website here.

A) What are Google Ads Reports?

Google Ads Reports.
Image Source: Self

Google Ads provides a set of predefined reports, along with the ability to create custom Google Ads Reports, that match your business use cases. Google Ads Reports make use of a diverse set of metrics and dimensions, thereby taking into account both qualitative and quantitative aspects.

Dimensions, such as page URL, city, etc. are the qualitative factors, whereas metrics such as the number of users, sessions, etc. are the quantitative factors. One of the most vital, Google Ads Report, is the keyword planning report, which allows you to understand, which keywords bring you the most number of conversions and the amount of money you’re spending on them. It enables you to remove the money-pit keywords and retain only the ones that are effective in bringing in the revenue.

To learn more, click here.

B) The Role of Reports

When it comes to understanding the successes and failures of your advertising campaigns, reports are critical. They provide detailed feedback in the form of data, allowing you to assess a campaign’s efficacy and make adjustments depending on the information provided. Since Google is so thorough, there is a lot of information to choose from.

Double segmentation is another excellent approach to use data from reports. This entails selecting and combining metrics such as time of day, language, and device type. For instance, mobile users who click on an ad during the hours of 1-3 p.m. The data you get back from the report after double segmenting is more intricately defined and can often provide more actionable insight.

C) Report Types

Within Google Ads, there are a variety of report types to choose from. We’ll concentrate on the three primary types of report categories: extensions, analytics, and shopping. Here are some of the most important characteristics of those categories:

  • Extensions: Extension reports give you information about any call-based or feed-based extensions you’ve used in your advertising efforts.
  • Analytics: Analytics Reports help you gain a better picture of how well your ads are performing overall. This can apply to a single Ad, a collection of advertisements, a campaign as a whole, or keywords. Bounce rate, average time on site, new visitors, and other variables are tracked by analytics. If you don’t need to double segment, you may easily examine these Metrics in the platform’s columns.
  • Shopping: Shopping Reports give you information about your Google Shopping adverts. The product partition report and the shopping performance report are included.

D) Metrics & Visuals You Should Use

Although most metrics on Google Ads Reports will be relevant to someone, certain metrics are more valuable. This is because regardless of your advertising campaign, everyone will need them to a certain degree. Here are 5 of the most important metrics and visuals in reports:

  • Analytics metrics and visuals: Metrics and visualizations from analytics can help you better understand who sees and clicks on your adverts. Analytics can tell you how long visitors spend on your site, as well as their bounce rate and the number of pages they visit. This can assist you to figure out if the visitor is likely to make a future purchase and can also aid with remarketing.
  • Campaign volume over time: This is a beautiful picture that you should use. You may compare all of your campaigns against each other over time by looking at their volume. This helps you to eliminate the poorest campaigns and focus on improving the campaign or keywords as a whole.
  • Impression share by device over time: This is a very useful graphic because it allows you to compare the success of your advertising across all devices. If your campaign is having trouble on one platform, in particular, it’s likely that it needs to be optimized for that platform. Keep in mind that descriptions on mobile and tablet devices are typically shorter. It’s possible that this will determine whether you succeed or fail.
  • Keyword search volume over time: This graph displays the most frequently searched keyword terms that result in ad clicks over a given time period. This allows you to see which keywords are bringing in the most money, as well as which ones are causing you to lose money.
  • Regionalized cost and performance visuals: These graphics aid in your knowledge of how your efforts are doing in various geographic areas. When it comes to impressions, clicks, and other analytics measures like bounce rate, the images are excellent.
Google Ads Reports-> visuals
Image Source

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How To Read A Google Ads Report

At first, reading a Google Ads Report can be daunting. There’s a lot of information to sort through, and not all of it is useful to you.

Prerequisites

  • Working knowledge of Google Ads.
  • A Google Ads account linked to at least one website.

Here’s a quick checklist to help you identify the measure you’re looking for:

  • It’s generally a good idea to start by defining what you want to know. Because Google collects a large amount of data, the field will almost always be present.
  • Next, determine whether you want to look for statistics at the campaign level, for a specific ad group, or for a single keyword. Prior to taking any action, campaigns are listed. Simply select a campaign to access ad groups. Click the ad group to find a keyword.
  • Select the dayparts menu on the left-hand side to see data for a specific time of day for a keyword/ad group/campaign. Graphs can also be used to help visualize the data. At the top of the page, you can activate graphs.
how-to-read-google-ads-report
Image Source

Google Ads Reporting – Best Practices

It’s critical to use metrics correctly while working with Google Ads Reports. Here are some best practices to follow while working with Google Ads Reports:

  • Have a clear goal: You should always have a clear aim in mind when using Google Ads Reports. This could be done to track outcomes, test new ways to improve an Ad, or find a more accurate and efficient approach to reach a specific demographic or geographic profile. Once you’ve established a target, you’ll be able to better comprehend what the metrics are telling you and what you can do to improve your advertising success.
  • Use context with your analysis: Context is crucial since it gives you a broader view of your ad’s performance. For example, if you run a year-round ad for sunglasses, it will perform better in the summer than in the winter. The context will save you money on advertising by preventing you from wasting money on irrelevant items, keywords, and more. It will also make it easy to identify keywords and advertising that aren’t working well. You should also refrain from making snap decisions about campaigns. If a campaign is new, it may take some time to gather enough data to make an assessment of its success.
  • Focus your analysis where it matters: Filters can be used to highlight the most critical marketing metrics. This will make it easy to spot problems and achievements. More data segmentation can also make it easier to discover problems at every stage of a campaign. You may also get a better understanding of your stats by using charts and graphs. Data visualization makes it easier to spot trends, especially when there is a lot of data to consider.
  • Personalise your reports: You may ensure that the focus of your Google Ads Reports is on exactly what you require by personalizing them. You can save your most essential metrics to make them easy to find and analyze again. You may also create custom columns to focus solely on the indicators that you know are most important to your ad performance.

Get the Most Out of Predefined Reports

Predefined Google Ads Reports can be found in Google Ads’ Tools & Settings menu. These reports were previously called Dimensions reports, and they’re essentially Excel pivot tables simplified. They make it incredibly simple to get actionable data for campaign optimizations.

Your time is valuable as a marketer. These pre-defined reports allow you to easily pull data from various time periods and parameters.

  • Search Terms Report: With the flexibility to sort by performance, quickly pull in your top-spending search phrases. You can target campaigns, ad groups, and keywords using filters at the campaign, ad group, and keyword level. Find search queries quickly to use as keywords or to exclude from your targeting.
  • Time Report: Day of Week and Hour of Day analyses aren’t usually top of mind when it comes to marketing. These types of assessments are often overlooked in favor of more critical work. With pre-defined reports, you can immediately see which days and hours have the greatest influence on your business. You may be able to optimize for specific days and hours depending on how your campaign is set up.
  • Landing Page Report: When was the last time you evaluated the effectiveness of your landing page? Ideally, this happens frequently, but the majority of the time it does not. This pre-built analysis will show you which landing pages are the most beneficial to your company. It will also tell you your page’s “Mobile-friendly Click Rate.” This is a fantastic tool to troubleshoot any mobile issues. Your website should be mobile-friendly in 2021!

Steps to create custom Google Ads Reports

With Google Ads, users can create a diverse set of business reports, making use of a broad set of predefined templates. It also allows users to create their custom reports, using various dimensions and metrics, to meet their business requirements and draw crucial insights about how their campaigns are performing, the number of conversions, etc.

You create custom reports in Google Ads, using the following steps:

Step 1: Signing in to Google Ads

Login to your Google Ads account with your credentials, such as username and password.

Google Ads Sign in page.
Image Source: Self

Once you’ve logged in, click on the reporting icon, found at the top right corner of your screen. A new window will now open up, where you can either select the predefined templates to start creating your reports or create custom reports from scratch.

Reporting option.
Image Source: Self

Click on the custom reports option. You can now select from a wide variety of report types such as a table, line chart, pie chart, etc.

Custom Report Types.
Image Source: Self

Step 2: Setting up dimensions and metrics for custom Google Ads Reports

Once you’ve selected the desired type of custom report, the report definition page will now open up on your screen, where you will find all dimensions and metrics from the pane on the left.

Report canvas.
Image Source: Self

Click on the edit option, and provide a name for your report. You can compose your report on the right pane, also known as the canvas.

To start defining your report, you need to drag and drop the dimensions and metrics, from the pane on the left. Click on the campaign dimension and drag it onto the canvas. You can also choose ads, keywords as your level of detail. Al these options provide, a different level of granularity.

Choosing metrics and dimensions.
Image Source: Self

Expand the conversions section, and drag the conversions and conversion rate option onto your canvas. Your custom report will now represent all the campaigns that bring you the maximum number of conversions. You can also use the filter option to change the order of items and create reports based on specific values.

This is how you can set up dimension and metrics to create your custom Google Ads Report.

Step 3: Saving your Google Ads Reports

Once you’ve defined your custom report and selected the desired metrics, you now need to save it, so that you can access it later. Click on the save option, found at the top right corner of your screen, to save your progress.

Saving Reports.
Image Source: Self

If you have a Google Ads manager account, you can create reports based on multiple accounts, aggregating them based on ads and campaigns.

This is how you can create a custom report to meet your business needs.

Conclusion

This article teaches you to set up a custom report in Google Ads. It also provides in-depth knowledge about the concepts behind every step to help you understand and implement them efficiently. Creating impeccable business reports requires users to access, combine data from Google Ads & multiple sources within their organization, and even transform it, to derive crucial insights.

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Tell us about your experience of setting up Custom Reports in Google Ads! Let us know in the comments section below.

Talha
Software Developer, Hevo Data

Talha is a seasoned Software Developer, currently driving advancements in data integration at Hevo Data, where he have been instrumental in shaping a cutting-edge data integration platform for the past four years. With a significant tenure at Flipkart prior to their current role, he brought innovative solutions to the space of data connectivity and software development.

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