Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is an internet marketing model in which you pay a fee each time your ad is clicked. It’s a paid method of driving traffic to your website, rather than trying to draw in visitors organically.

What Is a PPC Report?

A PPC report is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a report that is used to demonstrate the results of your PPC campaign.

PPC report helps how well the PPC campaign is meeting goals and what can do to improve it. For a PPC report to be of any use, however, it needs to be well structured and use the correct metrics. A PPC report allows you to see how your paid ad campaigns are performing. This allows you to measure your ad performance based on your key business goals.

The most important thing to include in a PPC report is dependent on what is being tracked, “If the goal of the PPC campaign is to build awareness, then the click-through rate (CTR) is the most important metric. If the goal of the campaign is the target audience performing an action, then the conversion rate (CVR) is the most important metric.”

How to Structure a PPC Report?

The best advice is to structure your PPC report so that it starts with the general and moves to the specific. That way, anyone reading the report can get a basic understanding of what the report is showing, even if they don’t dive into the details.

The Most Important PPC Metrics are

1. Clicks:

The number of times a paid ad is clicked. If improving brand awareness is the main objective of your PPC campaign, clicks and impressions are two metrics that should be on the top of your list. If you’re looking to make a sale, then getting a paid ad click is just the beginning of the sales process—but every sale has to start somewhere. The number of clicks you get will depend on how much money you’re spending, of course, but what you really need to monitor are any trends or variations in clicks.

2. Cost Per Click (CPC)

The average amount you pay each time a person clicks on your paid ad is referred to as Cost per Click (CPC), and it’s another useful metric of your PPC success. CPCs vary by industry, but just like clicks, you’ll want to keep a close eye on trends.

CPCs are based on the competitiveness of the keywords that you’re using. If you start to see your CPCs increase, consider using longer-tail keywords to attract more targeted traffic, or increasing your maximum bids to stay competitive for your most important keywords. CPCs are additionally a key metric to look at when determining your optimum budget if you have a specific conversion goal in mind.

3. Click-Through Rate (CTR)

Click-Through Rate (CTR) is a measure of how often your ads are shown versus how often your ads are clicked on (i.e. clicks/impressions). So, for example, if your ads were shown 1,000 times and clicked on 500 times, your CTR would be 50%. CTRs vary throughout the month, throughout the week, and even throughout the day.

4. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the number of conversions divided by the total number of clicks. A conversion is when someone performs the action that you are targeting. That action could be calling you, filling in a contact form, subscribing, or even making a purchase. The conversion rate isn’t a measure of the ad itself, but rather how effective your landing page is at converting people who have clicked through to it.

5. Cost per Conversion

Cost per Conversion is the actual cost paid to get a sale or a lead, there’s no singular Cost per Conversion to shoot for when running PPC campaigns. Instead, it all comes down to how much a sale is worth to you, which means you need to look at your profit margins and determine what an acceptable Cost per Conversion is for each of your product lines.

6. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS is the return that you get on your PPC expenditures, and you can calculate it by dividing the profit from an ad campaign by the cost of that ad campaign.

7. Sales

For sponsored product ads, it is the total product sales generated from clicks on your ads. For Sponsored Brands, all purchases for your brand’s products are made by shoppers who clicked on your ad, including sales of any product in your advertised brand made by Amazon and other sellers.

8. Budget

For sponsored product ads, it is the average amount you are willing to spend on your campaign per day. For Sponsored Brands, it is the maximum amount for the lifetime of your campaign, or a capped amount to spend per day on your campaign.