PPC reporting: the KPIs that matter, a one-page client report and Google’s rules

What is PPC reporting?

PPC reporting is the regular summary of what a pay-per-click account achieved, what it cost and what will change next. For a client, a good PPC report answers three questions: did the ads produce the result we agreed, what did it cost including the agency, and what is the plan.

Most guides to PPC reporting are written by companies that sell reporting software, and they are good on what metrics exist and how to chart them. What they leave out is that for an agency, the report is also a statement about costs that Google regulates, and that a client’s real question is whether the whole spend, including the agency, paid off.

This guide covers paid search, mainly Google Ads, though the structure works for Microsoft Advertising and paid social too. How these metrics fit with the rest of a marketing dashboard is covered in the guide to marketing metrics worth tracking.

The PPC KPIs, and where each belongs

The PPC KPIs that belong at the top of a client report are the ones tied to the client’s goal: conversions, cost per acquisition, return on ad spend and the return after fees. The rest are diagnostics, useful for explaining a change but not a measure of success on their own.

Metric	Formula	What it answers	Where it goes
Conversions	Count of the agreed conversion action	Did the ads produce the result we agreed?	Top line
Cost per acquisition (CPA)	Cost / conversions	What did each result cost?	Top line
Return on ad spend (ROAS)	Conversion value / cost	How much value per dollar of ad spend?	Top line, if values are tracked
Return after fees	(Conversion value – cost – fee) / (cost + fee)	What did the client get for the whole spend, including us?	Top line
Click-through rate (CTR)	Clicks / impressions	Are the ads relevant to the searches?	Diagnostics
Cost per click (CPC)	Cost / clicks	What is each visit costing?	Diagnostics
Conversion rate	Conversions / clicks	Is the landing page doing its job?	Diagnostics
Search impression share	Impressions / estimated eligible impressions	How much of the available demand did we reach?	Diagnostics
Quality Score	Google’s 1 to 10 rating per keyword	Where are ads or pages weak against competitors?	Working notes, not the report

Google Ads, About Quality Score; Google Ads, About impression share

Top-line metrics

Conversions, cost per acquisition and return on ad spend tell the client what the ads produced and what each result cost. They only mean something if conversion tracking is set up for the action the client actually values, such as a sale, a booked call or a qualified form, and not for page views or button clicks dressed up as conversions.

Return after fees

Return on ad spend leaves out the cost of managing the account. For a client, that fee is part of the cost of advertising. Showing the return after ad spend and fees is the honest version of the same number, and the one a finance team will work out anyway.

Diagnostics

Click-through rate, cost per click, conversion rate and impression share explain why the top line moved. Google defines search impression share as the impressions received divided by the estimated impressions the ads were eligible for, and splits the lost share into budget and rank. Lost share from budget says the client could buy more of the same results; lost share from rank says the ads or the bids need work.

Quality Score is not a KPI

Some reporting guides, such as DashThis’s, list Quality Score among the metrics a PPC report should include. Google’s own help page says Quality Score is a diagnostic tool on a scale of 1 to 10 at the keyword level, that it is not a key performance indicator and should not be optimised or aggregated with the rest of your data, and that it is not an input in the ad auction. It is useful in your working notes to find weak ads or landing pages; it does not belong in a report to a client.

The report’s top line, worked out

The top line of a PPC report takes four inputs: ad spend, conversions, the value of a conversion and the management fee. From them come cost per acquisition, return on ad spend and the return once the fee is counted.

Enter a month’s ad spend, conversions, the value of a conversion and the management fee.

Ad spend this month$ConversionsValue per conversion$Management fee this month$

Cost per acquisition

$100.00

Ad spend / conversions

Return on ad spend

4.0x

Conversion value / ad spend

Cost per acquisition including the fee

$124.00

(Ad spend + fee) / conversions

Return after ad spend and fee

222.6%

(Value – spend – fee) / (spend + fee)

Hypothetical defaults. Value per conversion should come from the client: an average order value, or a lead’s value worked out from close rate and customer value.

With the defaults, $5,000 of ad spend produced 50 conversions worth $400 each, $20,000 in all. Cost per acquisition is $5,000 / 50 = $100, and return on ad spend is $20,000 / $5,000 = 4.0x. Add the $1,200 management fee and the cost per acquisition becomes $6,200 / 50 = $124, and the return after spend and fee is ($20,000 – $6,200) / $6,200 = 222.6%.

That last figure is the one a client would calculate for themselves if they wanted to know whether advertising was worth it. Putting it in the report first shows you have nothing to hide, and makes the conversation about how to improve it rather than whether to believe it. The ROAS calculator works out the same ratios for any account.

Getting the value right

Return on ad spend is only as good as the value attached to each conversion. For ecommerce, the tracked order value is usually enough. For lead generation, work out a lead’s value with the client: average customer value multiplied by the share of leads that become customers. Agree it in writing at the start and change it only when the client’s data changes, or the trend in the report means nothing.

A one-page PPC client report

A PPC client report should fit on one page: a headline, the top line, the cost, what moved it, what was done and what is next. Detail can sit in an appendix or a dashboard for clients who want it; the page is for decisions.

1. 1HeadlineOne sentence: the result against the goal, and why.
2. 2Top lineConversions, cost per acquisition, return on ad spend and return after fees, against last month and the target.
3. 3CostAd spend at the exact amount Google charged, and the management fee as a separate line.
4. 4What moved itTwo or three diagnostics that explain the top line: impression share, CTR, conversion rate.
5. 5What we didThe changes made this month and why.
6. 6Next monthThe plan, and anything needed from the client.

The headline

Write one sentence that a busy client could read alone: “Leads rose to 50 at $124 each including our fee, against a target of $130, because the new landing page converted better.” If the month went badly, the headline says so, and the rest of the page says why and what will change.

Report or dashboard

A dashboard shows numbers; a report explains them. AgencyAnalytics’ guide draws the same line between a PPC dashboard and a client report. Give clients who want to look at live data a dashboard, but send everyone the one-page report, because the dashboard cannot say what you changed or what you plan to do.

How often

Monthly suits most accounts: long enough for the numbers to settle, short enough to act on. Weekly updates make sense during a launch or a big change, but as short notes, not full reports. Quarterly reviews step back to targets, budget and strategy.

Google’s rules for reporting to clients

If you manage Google Ads on a client’s behalf, Google’s third-party policy sets rules your reports have to follow. They apply to agencies, freelancers and white-label partners alike, and none of the reporting guides that rank for this topic mention them.

Rule	What it requires	What it means for the report
Honesty about costs and results	Third parties must be transparent about their company, services, associated costs and the results advertisers can expect	No inflated claims, and no cost hidden inside another line
Cost reporting	Where Google’s terms require a monthly report, it must include costs, clicks and impressions at account level, with cost at the exact amount charged by Google, excluding the third party’s fees	Ad spend is reported as Google charged it; the fee is a separate line
Matching other reports	If you report other cost or performance data, such as keyword-level data across networks, you must provide the same for Google Ads	Do not report Google Ads more thinly than other channels
Management fees	Disclosed in writing to new customers before the first purchase, and on every invoice	The fee in the report should match the fee on the invoice
Customer IDs	Given to customers when they ask	The client can always identify and check their own account

Google Ads third-party policy; transparency requirements for third-party advertisers

Google’s third-party policy says advertisers working with a third party should have the same experience as working with Google directly, and that third parties should be honest and transparent about their company, services, costs and expected results. Its transparency requirements add the specifics above, including that cost must be reported at the exact amount Google charged, exclusive of any fees the third party charges, and that a management fee must be disclosed in writing before the first purchase and on all invoices.

In practice, this settles how a report shows cost: ad spend as Google charged it, and the fee as its own line. It also rules out the practice of building a margin into the media cost and reporting the total as ad spend. Agencies reselling PPC under their own brand are bound by the same rules; how that works is covered in what white-label marketing is.

Before the first report: set up what it will measure

The first report is only as good as the tracking behind it, so agree what will be measured before any budget is spent. Changing definitions halfway through makes every comparison in later reports meaningless.

1. Agree the conversion. One primary action the client values, such as a purchase, a booked call or a qualified enquiry. Everything else is secondary and stays out of the top line.
2. Agree its value. A tracked order value, or a lead value worked out with the client from close rate and customer value.
3. Test the tracking. Complete the conversion yourself and check it appears once, with the right value, before launch.
4. Tag other channels. Consistent UTM parameters on email, social and other links, built with a tool such as the UTM builder, so paid search is not credited with visits it did not bring.
5. Record a baseline. The last three months of conversions, cost and cost per acquisition, or zero for a new account, written down before the first change.

Brand and non-brand, worked through

Brand searches, people typing the client’s own name, usually convert cheaply because those people were already looking for the client. Blending them with everything else hides how the rest of the account is doing. Take a hypothetical month with $5,000 of spend and 50 conversions. Blended, that is a $100 cost per acquisition. But if brand campaigns spent $600 for 20 conversions and non-brand spent $4,400 for 30, brand cost $30 each and non-brand $146.67 each.

The blended $100 suggests the account is doing well; the split shows that new customers who did not already know the client cost nearly five times as much. Both numbers are true, and the client needs to see both, with non-brand as the measure of what the advertising is really adding.

Reporting lead generation: from lead to customer

For lead generation, a conversion in Google Ads is a lead, not a customer. A report that stops at leads cannot tell whether the advertising is paying for itself, because the leads that never become customers cost as much as the ones that do.

Ask the client to share what happened to each month’s leads: how many were qualified and how many became customers. Even a simple monthly count from their CRM or sales team turns the report from cost per lead into cost per customer, which is the figure that decides whether to spend more.

• Leads. What Google Ads counts, at a cost per lead.
• Qualified leads. The share the client’s team would follow up, and the cost per qualified lead.
• Customers. The share that bought, the cost per customer and the revenue they brought.

Report the later stages a month behind if sales take time to close, and say so on the page. A cost per customer that arrives late is still more useful than a cost per lead that arrives on time.

When results are bad

A bad month should be reported as clearly as a good one, with the cause if you know it and the plan either way. A bad month is easier to recover from than a report that tried to hide one.

• Say it in the headline. “Leads fell to 32, below the target of 45” is better than leading with a diagnostic that went up.
• Separate cause from guess. If impression share lost to budget rose, that is a cause. If you think a competitor raised bids, say it is a likely explanation, not a fact.
• Say what changes. The specific action, when it will happen and what you expect to see.
• Ask for what you need. A budget change, a landing page fix or faster lead follow-up, if that is what would help.

Comparing with benchmarks

Industry benchmarks can help a client see whether their numbers are in a normal range, but they are a poor target. The account’s own history is a better comparison: last month, the same month last year, and the trend over the last six months.

If you do show a benchmark, show where it comes from, what period and sample it covers, and how it was measured, because published averages differ widely between sources. Google Ads benchmarks by industry sets out the current figures by source, and why they disagree.

Common PPC reporting mistakes

The PPC reporting mistakes that do the most harm make an account look better than it is. Each is easy to avoid once you know to look for it.

• Counting the wrong conversions. Page views, scroll depth or button clicks reported as conversions inflate every efficiency metric.
• Leaving the fee out of the return. A return on ad spend without the management fee overstates what the client got.
• Mixing brand and non-brand. Brand searches convert cheaply because people were already looking for the client; blending them in hides how the rest of the account performs.
• Reporting Quality Score as a KPI. Google says it is a diagnostic, not a key performance indicator.
• Changing the comparison each month. Switch from last month to last year when it flatters the numbers and clients stop trusting the report.
• Too many charts. If a chart does not explain the top line or lead to an action, it belongs in an appendix.

Watch the daily spend

Automated bidding can spend unevenly from day to day. Google’s help page on Target CPA bidding suggests making sure you are comfortable spending up to 2 times the average daily budget on some days, while not exceeding the monthly charging limit. If a client sees a large single day in their bank statement, the report should already have explained why.

Before you send the report

Before a PPC report goes out, check that the numbers match Google’s billing, that the top line answers the client’s goal and that the page ends with action. A few minutes of checking heads off the questions that erode trust.

Numbers

Ad spend matches what Google charged for the period The management fee is shown on its own line Conversions match the agreed conversion action, with no duplicates

Meaning

The headline says whether the goal was met Each diagnostic on the page explains a top-line change Quality Score is not reported as a KPI

Action

The changes made this month are listed Next month’s plan is specific Anything needed from the client is asked for clearly

Ticks are saved in your browser.

Name the campaigns consistently so the report is easy to build and read; the campaign naming convention generator sets a pattern you can apply across accounts. And keep the report’s structure the same month to month, so the client learns where to look.