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Tired of drowning in a pool of numbers and acronyms while aiming for the highest position through Google Ads? You’re not alone.
Every marketer affirms that Google Ads is a goldmine, but finding the right lumps is like searching for buried treasure. With over 67% of consumers seeking personalized ads, according to the Adobe Commerce Survey, the challenge only grows.
To create an effective strategy and balance each aspect of the ads and content, you would head to find the appropriate Google Ads metrics. Right before you go, consider visiting this article. It's certain to give you insights on selecting the most relevant ones, going beyond a mere list of Google’s suggestions.
Key Metrics for Evaluating Ad Performance
A Google search will lead you to innumerable metrics, but don’t be intimidated that you have to invest time in each one of them. Rather, you need to devote time to finding out which one is relevant for you. This will leave you wondering-
Why Metric Selection Matters?
It does! Selecting the right metric will not only save time and effort but will also add to the efficiency of your actions. Working on irrelevant metrics, designing a strategy to improve them, and regularly monitoring their results to end up with no overall success in performance improvement or benefit will be frustrating.
Metrics fall into two categories:
- High-Impact Metrics: Directly influence goals (e.g., cost, quality score, impression share, ROAS).
- Contextual Metrics: Provide additional context and perspectives (e.g., engaged time, number and types of visitors, geographic location, source referral).
The right metrics, however, are the key to addressing the weaknesses of running campaigns and developing new ones. It also forms the base for setting the goals. For instance, metrics like ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) and ROI (Return on Investment) are crucial for measuring the success of your campaigns and ensuring that your ad spend is generating positive returns.
Core Metrics to Monitor
Some of the necessary metrics to monitor include:
Interaction Rate
It signifies the ad engagement. The higher value indicates a positive impact and suggests that higher conversions should be expected. Thus, performance in interaction rate can be used as an indicator of the requirement for change in strategic planning.
Conversion Rate
It refers to the number of individuals who converted. Generally, it is marked by the users clicking the call to action and performing the task that follows. Conversion rate is an effective metric to identify how well the ad or content is performing in your ulterior motive of expanding your customer base. It also signifies the efficacy of customer segmentation and that your customer categorization strategy is to the point. A 2 to 5% conversion rate is good.
Average Cost per Acquisition (CPA)
Cost per acquisition refers to the expenditure incurred by the company to gain a new customer or subscriber. It can be used to improve and modify the budget through actions on other metrics like quality score. Further, CPA can be influenced by understanding the reason behind the lack of conversion, increasing the audience's curiosity, optimizing content for its relevance, enhancing the landing page experience, and other such measures.
Detailed Overview of Core Metrics
The above mentioned three core metrics were crucial to monitoring. But the list doesn't end there. Rather, the real one begins here.
Impressions and Impression Share
It indicates how many times the ad was shown to users. The impression does not differentiate between new and old viewers. However, it is a significant metric to identify the reach of an ad. Impression share is another metric that is understood as the percentage of ad impressions for a specific ad compared to the total number of impressions possible to get. The impression share can be enhanced by increasing the campaign budget and bid. Further, you can also decrease the regional targets and improve the ad quality.
Interaction Rate
The interactions refer to the actions performed by the viewers on viewing the ad. The actions vary as per the ad format. They are views for video ads, clicks for text ads, swipes for shopping ads and so on. Interaction rate is the metric indicating the frequency of user interaction with the ad. It is an effective metric to be kept as an indicator for deciding the relevancy of ads and changing them as needed.
The interaction rate is calculated by dividing the number of interactions by the number of impressions. The interactions are counted as shares, likes and comments, while the impression is the number of times the ad is seen.
It is possible to optimize the interaction rate by identifying the target group for the product and validating its relevance as per their demographics. Additionally, incorporating visuals and audio that remain in viewers’ minds and are worth a topic of discussion is more likely to perform as desired.
Cost
Cost refers to the daily expenditure that the company can incur. The number is indicative of the amount that has been already spent or can be expected to be spent.
Average Cost
The average cost is calculated by dividing the total cost by the number of interactions. The average cost is important to know as it contributes to setting up the budget for the ad. It informs about the worth of each CTA.
Conversions
As per Google, the Google ad metric, conversion, is defined as the valuable action taken by the customer as per your business. It is derived from the content and free or paid ad. It is measured by conversion tracking. General calls to action that can be counted as conversions include making the purchase, booking the appointment or other actions.
Cost per Conversion
It refers to the cost or amount spent to gain each conversion. The value is obtained by dividing the total cost by the total number of conversions. It is based on the clicks and does not count the clicks that did not lead to CTA. Hence, the cost per conversion is an effective metric to understand the number of clicks leading to the conversion.
Regardless, the aim will be to lower the cost per conversion. Be sure to review the keywords in your ads regularly, identify the high and low-converting ones and act accordingly. Incorporate negative keywords, enhance the user experience by optimizing the landing page, and find the best time to run the ad based on the information gained from the data.
Quality Score
It is a vital metric that measures the quality and relevance of your ad and keywords. The quality score assists in measuring the Cost per Click (CPC) and ad rank. It ranges between 1 to 10, with 1 being the worst and 10 being the best score. It is influenced by multiple factors such as the efficiency of ad text, relevancy in keywords and landing page, click-through rate and previous performance of your Google ads. The most important factor here is the click-through rate, and concisely, the quality score is all about the relevance and usefulness of the ad.
You can enhance your quality score by revising your keyword structure as per the different ad groups. Further, improve the ad and content and use the option to change headlines. Google displays appropriate text from multiple sources according to the search query, and you must utilize this feature to improve your relevancy.
Performance Metrics Breakdown
The following metrics are worth monitoring when evaluating the performance is your goal:
Clicks and Click-Through Rate (CTR)
It is the topmost performance metric that offers meaningful insights into your work. The click-through rate states the number of people who clicked on your ad compared to the ones who saw it. The metric is a direct indicator and is influenced by the relevancy and quality of the content and keywords. The click-through rate includes the free and paid ads and content. It forms effective data to help you decide which keyword and content type best resonates with your audience.
As we indicated, the main factors influencing the click-through rate are the ones to be worked upon for improvement. Hence, keyword improvement can be done by working on branded keywords, commercial intent, and negative and local keywords. Also, it is essential to specify the target audience and keep the ad simple to understand at first glance.
Engagements
Engagement refers to audience interaction with the ads. The type of engagement can vary and includes filling out forms, spending a specific amount of time on the website, clicking on a specific link, or doing anything else. As per Google, an action can be considered as engagement if a session lasts over 10 seconds, includes more than two page views or involves conversion. The click-through rate, cost per click, and number of clicks also indicate the ad engagement.
The engagement rate is a metric that offers insights into engagement and is calculated by dividing the number of engaged sessions by the total number of sessions over a specific period. There are certain ways to enhance user engagement, such as modifying website design and enhancing interaction and content. You can modify the ad placement, frequency, format and target audience.
Invalid Clicks
These refer to unintentional clicks that were not aimed at specific ads and were not desired for conversion. These can be generated accidentally, duplicated, or can be fraudulent traffic as well. The invalid clicks are not charged for. However, sometimes these end up in the reports and must be identified to ensure not spending on them. The invalid metrics can be easily identified through Google's performance section.
Average CPC and CPM
CPC or cost per click is the amount paid to obtain customers through the ad. It varies according to the ad, targeted keywords and the country where it is displayed. It is calculated by dividing the total amount spent by the number of clicks. On the other hand, CPM is the cost per mille refers to the amount paid for every thousand impressions. This metric is commonly used on social media, email marketing, comparison sites and display ad campaigns. The CPM is calculated by dividing the total budget by the total number of impressions * 1000.
CPC can be lowered by increasing the quality score and improving the incorporated keywords. Further, you can make the most of your CPM by identifying the suitable demographics for your ad, enhancing its relevance, testing different versions of the ad, and setting up specific frequencies for ad display.
Average CPV
CPV refers to the cost per view, where the view is determined by viewing for at least 30 seconds of view of the ad or shorter if the ad is of lesser duration. The cost is also applicable to ad interaction. It is an important metric that informs about the quality of the ad and the effectiveness of the ad expenditure. CPV can be calculated by dividing the total cost of video advertisement by the total number of views. Regular evaluation of the incurred cost across different platforms and campaigns is recommended to ensure increased effectiveness. Retrieving key insights from audience information can also help in improving the CPV.
Average CPA
Cost per acquisition (CPA) should be kept low. However, a CPA that is too low indicates inefficient expenditure, which will affect the success rate of a company. Informing about the financial impact of your content on campaigns, a good CPA is considered to be 3:1. A 1:1 CPA indicates more expenditure that will lead to lower profits.
View Rate and Watch Time
The view rate or the impression rate is the ratio of the total views to total impressions. Often used in percentage, it is the marker of an ad’s relevance and quality. Short videos tend to have a higher view rate. These can be improved by enhancing the quality of content, modifying the thumbnails and improving the call to action. Watch time is the overall amount of time that a video is watched.
Results and Conversion Metrics
When it comes to evaluating the success of your campaigns, results and conversion metrics provide insights into how well your ads are performing in terms of generating measurable returns.
Results and Results Value
Results provide the overall impact of the ads and can be used to determine whether campaigns are meeting your goal or not. Results value is an important metric that states ‘calculated conversion values you've received across your primary conversion actions for each of the standard goals in your account.’ Results are better for comprehensive insights as they include conversions across all the standard goals. The results value is more suited for identifying the importance of specific goals for which the campaign is modified. The category includes coverages of both standard and customized goals.
Purchase & Phone Call Lead
Purchase refers to the number of users who bought the items after getting to know them through the ads. Phone call lead, on the other hand, refers to obtaining the leads through phone calls received via an ad campaign. These metrics are again effective in stating the importance of ads in driving conversions.
Viewability and Attribution Metrics
When assessing the effectiveness of your advertising efforts, these metrics help determine how often your ads are seen and how credit for conversions is assigned:
Viewable Impressions
All impressions aren’t viewable impressions. Rather, they need to meet the criteria set by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) to become a viewable impression. It is that 50% of the ad’s pixels must be visible in the browser continuously for a period of one second. The larger ads with over 2.4 lakh pixels must have 30% of the ad’s pixels visible, while in-stream videos must have 50% of the ad’s pixels visible for a continuous period of 2 seconds. The information about the metric is obtained by active view, which can be further utilized to enhance the site’s viewability.
Non-Viewable Impressions: Identifying placement issues
It refers to the ad being nonviewable owing to a lack of meeting the IAB criteria mentioned above. An ad is marked in this category when at least 50% of the ad isn’t visible to the viewers for one or two continuous seconds, depending on its type.
Viewable Rate: Measuring visibility percentage
The viewable rate is defined as the percentage of viewable impressions from the total number. It helps in stating the effectiveness of the ad.
Attribution Metrics
These metrics provide the data for future campaigns. Indicating specifically about the marketing channels and activities, these are reliable in identifying the status of current running campaigns. The choice of metrics to be considered here varies based on the type of industry, the channel and the platform of concern. However, generally, attribution metrics include conversion, conversion rate and revenue. Since these metrics are the same as discussed previously, the discussed methods to improve them hold.
Competitive Metrics: Search and Display Impression Share
When evaluating your position in the market, competitive metrics reveal how often your ads are shown compared to competitors:
Search Impression Share: Comparing impressions
The metric is an indicator of impressions received on the search engine. The value obtained is relative to the total number of impressions you were eligible to receive from the stated platform. The search impression share metric plays a critical role in determining your exposure compared to the competitors. It can be used to improve the existing bids and budgets.
Search Absolute Top Impression Share: Top position metrics
It is essential to monitor the metric to know the times when the ad was the first or top-performing one. It can be calculated by dividing the number of absolute top impressions by the number of impressions eligible to receive among top ads.
Search Lost Impression Share: Tracking missed opportunities
It is indicative of the ads that were not shown. Search lost impression share is the percentage of time that the ad did not reach the customers on the search network owing to poor ad rank in the auction.
Display Impression Share: Performance on the Display Network
This metric, similar to search impression share, is the ratio of received performance and eligible performance. The platform of concern here is the display network, unlike search engines in search impression share.
Uplevel Your Google Ads Monitoring & Reporting with ReportGarden
The significance of different metrics must be crystal clear to you by now. Presentation of these metrics in an effective manner and in combination with the context is the most appropriate way to maximize their value. While you are totally capable of managing this, the aid of a reporting tool tends to maximize your productivity.
Look no further than ReportGarden for Google Ads performance management and reporting. Besides automating data collection, its effective visualization eases the task, offering more time for deciphering the strategy, pattern and ideas. Try our comprehensive Custom PPC Dashboard for Digital Agencies now to enhance your capabilities!
FAQs
1. How do I set up my Google Ads Dashboard?
Creating a new Google Ads dashboard is simply a matter of a few steps. Here is how you will go:
Step 1: Go to Google Ads account and click the ‘Campaigns’ icon.
Step 2: Go to the section menu and then click ‘Insights and reports.’
Step 3: Select Dashboards and click the ‘+’ button to create a new one. You can also edit the existing dashboard by clicking on the appropriate one.
2. Are all Google Ads Metrics equal?
No. The Google metrics hold differing relevance and importance in understanding campaign performance and enhancing ROI. The significance of this, however, varies according to the user.
3. Does CTR affect Google's ranking?
Ads with high CTR are deemed to be of high quality and relevance in nature, thus enhancing their reach. They can also be expected to be top search results.
