PPC Reporting: 25 Essential Metrics Every Advertiser Should Track

PPC Reporting Philosophy

Most PPC reports are too long, too dense, and too disconnected from action. They report numbers without telling anyone what to do about them. The best PPC reports do three things: they show outcomes that matter, they explain why those outcomes happened, and they propose concrete next steps.

The Three-Layer Report

• Layer 1 (Executive): 3-5 outcome metrics, trend versus prior period, and a one-line summary.
• Layer 2 (Manager): 10-15 metrics broken out by channel, campaign, or audience, with variance explanations.
• Layer 3 (Analyst): Granular metrics for diagnosing issues — search query reports, keyword performance, asset performance.

Different audiences need different layers. The CMO doesn't want to see keyword-level data. The PPC analyst doesn't need an executive summary. Build the right report for the audience instead of forcing everyone into the same view.

Lagging vs Leading Metrics

Lagging metrics describe what already happened (revenue, conversions, ROAS). Leading metrics predict what's about to happen (impression share, CTR, conversion rate trends). The best reports include both: lagging metrics for accountability, leading metrics for early warning.

Metric Discipline

Resist the temptation to add metrics. Every additional number in a report is one more thing the reader has to process, and one more way for the signal to drown in noise. The PPC reports I build for clients usually shrink over time, not grow. Start with the smallest set that supports decisions and add only when something is missing.

This piece walks through 25 metrics worth tracking. You don't need all 25 in every report — you need to know which apply to your goals and which to elevate when. Search Engine Land's reporting coverage is worth keeping up with for emerging metrics and changes to legacy ones.

Volume and Reach Metrics

Volume metrics tell you how big your account's footprint is. They're the foundation of every other calculation, but they're also easy to misuse — high volume without engagement is meaningless.

1. Impressions

The number of times your ads were shown. Useful as a denominator for CTR and as a sanity check on reach. By itself, impressions tell you almost nothing — a million impressions with zero clicks is worthless.

2. Clicks

The number of times users clicked your ads. The first signal that someone engaged. Be aware that click data includes invalid clicks Google has not yet filtered, so the raw number always overstates real engagement slightly.

3. Reach

The number of unique users who saw your ads. Reach matters for awareness campaigns and helps you spot whether you're hitting the same users repeatedly versus expanding your audience.

4. Frequency

Average number of impressions per unique user. High frequency without conversion lift signals burnout. Most accounts should target frequency under 5 per user per week unless running a deliberate high-frequency awareness push.

5. Impression Share

The percentage of total available impressions you captured for your eligible queries. Less than 50% impression share means you're missing more opportunities than you're capturing. The two diagnostic sub-metrics matter:

• Lost IS (Budget): Your budget was insufficient. Increase budget if performance allows.
• Lost IS (Rank): Your bids or Quality Score were insufficient. Improve relevance and consider higher bids on top performers.

Impression share is the single most useful diagnostic metric in Google Ads — it tells you the gap between current and maximum performance.

Engagement and Click Quality Metrics

Engagement metrics tell you whether your ads earned interest and whether the clicks you paid for were real.

6. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Clicks divided by impressions. The classic engagement metric. Strong CTR signals relevance — both to users and to Google's auction algorithm. Aim for 5%+ on branded campaigns and 2%+ on non-branded search.

7. Average Cost Per Click (CPC)

Total cost divided by clicks. Lower is better, all else equal. CPC trends are an early warning system — rising CPCs without rising conversion rates usually means competitive pressure or Quality Score erosion.

8. Quality Score

Google's 1-10 estimate of ad quality based on expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Higher Quality Scores lower CPCs and improve positions. See our Quality Score guide for the full breakdown.

9. Average Position (Deprecated, Replaced by Top/Absolute Top IS)

Average position is gone. Use the replacement metrics instead:

• Search Top IS: Percentage of impressions that appeared anywhere above the organic results
• Search Absolute Top IS: Percentage of impressions that appeared in the very first ad slot

10. Bounce Rate

Percentage of single-page sessions from your paid traffic. High bounce rate signals message mismatch, slow landing pages, or poor click quality. Pair with engaged session data from GA4.

11. Invalid Click Rate

Percentage of detected invalid clicks Google filtered out. Public-facing data is limited, but your reports should track invalid click rates for transparency. Spikes signal click fraud activity worth investigating using the techniques in our click fraud guide.

For verifying click quality across your entire account, Sentinel's Google Ads Clicker Bot provides the kind of independent visibility that built-in dashboards cannot.

Conversion and Revenue Metrics

Conversion metrics are why anyone pays for ads. Get these right and the rest of your reporting falls into place.

12. Conversions

The number of meaningful actions your ads drove. Define what counts as a conversion before running the campaign — leads, sales, signups, downloads, calls, appointments. Use Google Ads conversion tracking and validate it with offline data periodically.

13. Conversion Rate

Conversions divided by clicks. The single best efficiency metric on the click-to-action side. A 2x lift in conversion rate effectively halves your cost per acquisition without changing anything in your media buying.

14. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Total cost divided by conversions. The number stakeholders care about most. Track against an internally agreed target CPA — a CPA that exceeds customer lifetime value math is a problem regardless of conversion rate.

15. Conversion Value (Revenue)

The total monetary value of conversions tracked. For e-commerce, this is order revenue. For lead gen, it's modeled lead value or deal value once a lead converts. Modeling lead value is hard but worthwhile — without it, all CPA decisions ignore lead quality.

16. Average Order Value (AOV)

Conversion value divided by conversions. Useful for spotting whether ads are attracting bigger or smaller baskets over time. A rising AOV with stable conversion volume is an underrated win.

17. New Customer Ratio

Percentage of conversions from first-time customers versus returning ones. For acquisition campaigns, you want this high — paying to re-acquire existing customers is wasteful. For retention campaigns, low new-customer ratios are appropriate.

18. View-Through Conversions

Conversions where the user saw an ad without clicking and converted later. Important for display and YouTube measurement. Validate with incrementality testing — view-through can over-credit ads users would have ignored.

Efficiency and ROI Metrics

Efficiency metrics translate spend into outcomes per dollar. They're the metrics CFOs and CMOs care about, and they're the metrics that determine whether the program lives or dies in the next budget review.

19. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Revenue divided by ad spend. A ROAS of 4:1 means $4 in revenue per $1 spent. The most common e-commerce efficiency metric. Note that ROAS is a gross measure — it doesn't account for product cost, fulfillment, or returns. Pair it with margin data for a full picture.

20. Return on Investment (ROI)

Profit divided by ad spend, expressed as a percentage. ROI accounts for cost of goods, unlike ROAS. A 4x ROAS on a product with 25% margin is roughly break-even — the ROI is near zero. Use ROI for strategic decisions, ROAS for tactical optimization.

21. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) to CAC Ratio

Customer lifetime value divided by customer acquisition cost. The most important long-term efficiency metric. A healthy LTV:CAC ratio is typically 3:1 or higher. Lower ratios signal the business is paying too much to acquire customers relative to what they're worth.

22. Marketing Efficiency Ratio (MER)

Total revenue divided by total marketing spend across all channels. MER is becoming more popular as cross-channel attribution becomes harder. It avoids the attribution wars by simply measuring whether the whole marketing program is generating proportional revenue.

Auction Insights and Competitive Metrics

Auction Insights is one of the most underused features in Google Ads. It shows how you compare to competitors who bid on the same keywords — visibility you can't get from internal metrics alone.

23. Outranking Share

Percentage of auctions where your ad appeared above a specific competitor's ad. Track this for your top 5 competitors over time. Falling outranking share against a particular competitor often signals they've increased bids or improved Quality Score in your category.

24. Overlap Rate

Percentage of auctions where you and a competitor both showed ads. High overlap rate means you're consistently fighting the same competitor for impressions. Useful for identifying who your real competitive set is — sometimes it's not who you think.

25. Top of Page Rate and Absolute Top Rate

The percentage of your impressions that appeared at the top of the page or in the absolute top slot. These replace the deprecated average position metric and are better diagnostics. If your top-of-page rate is dropping, dig in immediately — something has changed in the auction.

Reading Auction Insights

Don't read auction insights once a quarter and forget them. Set up a monthly review that compares each top competitor's outranking share trend to your own. Sudden changes in any direction usually have a story behind them — a new entrant, a bidding strategy change, a Quality Score shift, or a budget change.

Beyond Google's Built-In Data

Competitive intelligence doesn't end with auction insights. Tools that scrape competitor ad copy, landing pages, and creative rotations give you visibility Google doesn't expose. Sentinel's Google Ads Clicker Bot is one option for this kind of independent competitive view, complementing the structured data Google provides.

For more on systematic competitive analysis, see our competitive analysis guide.

Attribution and Multi-Touch Metrics

Attribution is the assignment of credit for conversions across touchpoints. Different attribution models tell very different stories about which channels and campaigns drive results. Choosing the right model is one of the most consequential reporting decisions you'll make.

Attribution Models

• Last click: 100% credit to the final touchpoint. Simple, but underweights upper-funnel work.
• First click: 100% credit to the first touchpoint. Useful for awareness measurement, less so for ROI.
• Linear: Equal credit to every touchpoint. Easy to explain, ignores meaningful differences.
• Time decay: More credit to touchpoints closer to conversion. Reasonable middle ground.
• Position-based: 40% to first, 40% to last, 20% to middle touchpoints. Useful for top and bottom of funnel emphasis.
• Data-driven attribution (DDA): Google's machine learning model that distributes credit based on actual contribution. The default for new accounts and the recommended choice for accounts with sufficient conversion data.

Why Attribution Matters

The same campaign can look like a hero or a dud depending on the model. A display campaign that gets 100% credit under last-click looks expensive; the same campaign under DDA might look efficient. The honest answer is usually somewhere between models — and it changes when you actually run incrementality tests.

Cross-Device and Offline Attribution

Modern customer journeys span devices and channels. A user might see your ad on mobile, research on desktop, and convert in-store. Attribution that ignores cross-device and offline conversions undercounts your true impact. Use Enhanced Conversions, offline conversion imports, and cross-device tracking to close the gaps.

Attribution Reporting Best Practices

• Pick one attribution model as your "official" view and stick with it
• Show alternative models in appendices for reference
• Validate with incrementality tests on the channels that matter most
• Don't change attribution models mid-quarter — you'll create reporting whiplash

Building Reports That Drive Action

The best metrics in the world don't matter if no one acts on them. Reports should be designed for the action they're supposed to trigger.

The Action-Oriented Dashboard

Every metric in a useful dashboard should answer one of three questions:

• Are we hitting our target? (red/yellow/green status)
• What changed since last period? (trend lines, period-over-period comparisons)
• What should we do next? (recommended actions tied to specific metrics)

If a metric doesn't answer any of those questions, cut it. Dashboards become useless not when they have too few metrics but when they have too many.

Tools for Reporting

• Looker Studio (formerly Data Studio): Free, integrates directly with Google Ads, Google Analytics, Sheets, and BigQuery. The default for most accounts.
• Supermetrics: Pulls data from 100+ marketing platforms into Sheets, Looker Studio, or BigQuery. Useful for cross-channel reporting.
• Optmyzr: PPC-specific automation and reporting platform with strong alerting capabilities.
• Custom BigQuery + Looker Studio: For advanced accounts that need cross-source joins, custom calculated metrics, and warehouse-grade scalability.

Reporting Cadence

The Final Test

The test of a good report isn't how many metrics it includes — it's whether the people receiving it can answer the question "What should we do differently this week?" If the answer is no, the report needs to change. Pair the metrics in this guide with the optimization frameworks in our bidding strategies guide, budget management guide, and negative keywords playbook to translate numbers into actions consistently.