Google Ads
What Google Ads cost you, and which campaign, product, term or country earned it back.
The cards
Cost is the only number here you actually spend. The rest exist to tell you whether it came back, and where it stopped coming back.
Each card carries a small trend line and follows the campaign picker — choose one campaign and they show that campaign's totals.
ImpressionsImpressionsPure visibility; only matters if clicks and sales follow. · ClicksClicksRaw traffic from ads; only valuable if clicks convert, so read beside CTR. · CTRCTRHow well your ad grabs attention in the feed.0.5% or more is healthy · Avg. CPCAvg. CPCCost per visit from Google search. · CostCostRead against conversions and value-per-cost, never alone. · ConversionsConversionsSales or actions Google drove; pair with cost-per-conversion. · Cost/Conv.Cost/Conv.What each Google sale costs you. · Conv. RateConv. RateWebsite visits that ended in a purchase. Not the same as Google Ads Conv. Rate, which divides by clicks.3.5% or more is healthy · Conv. Val / CostConv. Val / CostRevenue earned for every Google dollar.4 or more is healthy · Conv. Val / Conv.Conv. Val / Conv.The average value of each Google sale.
Read them in three moves
- What did it cost? Cost. Everything else is a ratio built on top of it.
- Did it pay? Conv. Val / Cost first, then Conversions. One says the rate, the other says whether there was enough of it to matter.
- Where did it break? CTR is what happened before the click, Conv. Rate is what happened after. Only one of the two moved.
Three pairs worth holding together
CTR + Conv. Rate. A high CTR with a low Conv. Rate means the ad promises something the landing page does not deliver. Fix the page, not the bid.
Avg. CPC + Conv. Val / Cost. Clicks getting dearer is fine while Conv. Val / Cost holds — you are paying more for traffic that still pays. Both moving the wrong way at once is the one to act on.
Conversions + Conv. Val / Conv. More conversions each worth less usually means the mix shifted to your cheaper products, not that anything improved.
Conv. Rate here divides by clicks, not sessions. It will read higher than the conversion rate on the Google Analytics pages, and that is arithmetic, not a tracking fault.
The tables
The money you are losing has a name and a row somewhere in here. These tabs are how you find it — by campaign, by product, by the phrase somebody typed, by country, by channel type.
Every tab is built the same way: one row per thing, sorted by Cost highest first, with a % △ against your comparison period beside every metric. Each has its own search box and its own chart view.
Every tab carries the same block of columns — Cost · CPC · CTR · Conversions · Conv. Val / Cost · Conv. Rate · Cost / Conv. · Impressions · Clicks — so the scan below works on any of them. What changes is what a row is.
Campaign
One row = one campaign. This tab has three columns the others do not: Search ISSearch ISSee the full entry., Display ISDisplay ISShare of eligible Display impressions you won and Click ShareClick ShareYour clicks / estimated clicks available on Search. Competitive headroom signal, plus a Campaign Type label.
How to scan it
- Sort by Cost, highest first. It opens that way.
- Look across at Conv. Val / Cost.
- The row that matters: your largest spend with the weakest return. That single row usually explains the account.
Then read Search IS on your best campaign. A strong return with a low impression share is a campaign you are under-buying, not one that is finished.
Product
One row = one product, labelled by its title.
Capped to the top 600 by cost, and it has no total row. The footer you are used to is missing on purpose — the cards carry the account total.
Sort by Cost, look across at Conv. Rate, and find the product taking real money at a conversion rate below the rest. That is either a price problem or a landing page problem, and the Product Diagnostics tab is the next stop.
Product Diagnostics
One row = one product again, same 600-row cap, same columns as Product.
Use it as the efficiency pass over the same catalogue: sort by Cost / Conv., highest first, and look at Clicks on those rows. Plenty of clicks with an expensive cost per conversion is a listing that attracts the wrong shopper.
Search Term
One row = one phrase somebody actually typed.
Capped to the top 500 by cost, no total row. This is the tab where money leaks.
- Sort by Cost, highest first.
- Look across at Conversions.
- The row that matters: real cost, zero conversions. That is your negative keyword list, written for you.
Country
One row = one country, based on where the person was, not where they were searching about.
Sort by Cost and read Conv. Rate beside it. A country buying clicks at a normal price and converting far below the others is usually shipping cost or delivery time, not the ad.
Channel
One row = one Google Ads channel type — Search, Shopping, Display and so on.
Sort by Cost, highest first, and read Conv. Val / Cost beside it. The row that matters: a channel type taking a large share of the budget on a weaker return than the rest.
No total row here either; this table is account-wide. Read it once a month to see whether your budget has drifted between channel types without a decision being made.
Filters
Nothing here moves until you press Apply, and one of these controls removes a table rather than narrowing it. Both are worth knowing before you go looking for missing rows.
Campaign — multi-select with search and an Apply button. It moves the cards and every tab together.
Account — appears only when more than one Google Ads account is connected.
Country — this one has a catch worth knowing. It applies to Campaign, Country and Channel. On Product, Product Diagnostics and Search Term it cannot apply, and those tabs replace their rows with the line "Country filter does not apply to this table." The table does not shrink, it disappears. Clear the country filter to get it back.
Chart view — each tab can switch from table to bar, line or pie, pick which metrics to plot (up to three) and overlay the previous period.
Watch out for
Products and Search Terms are capped. You are looking at the top 600 and top 500 rows by cost. It is the money, not the whole account.
Four tabs have no total row. Product, Product Diagnostics, Search Term and Channel deliberately show none. Read the total off the cards instead of adding the column up.
Conversions is not a whole number. Google reports fractions of a conversion, so a row can read 3.7. Nothing is broken.
Cost / Conv. and Cost/Conv. are the same measure. The tables space it out, the cards do not. Do not read them as two different numbers.
% △ needs a comparison period. With none set, every delta column is empty.
Do this first
Open the Search Term tab, sort by Cost, and read down to the first row with no conversions. Add it as a negative keyword before you touch a single bid.
See yoursYour spend by campaign, product, search term, country and channel.
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