TL;DR

• Every ad platform over-counts conversions by design — Meta, Google, and LinkedIn each claim credit for the same customer using overlapping attribution windows. 
• The fix is a four-tier trust hierarchy: CRM closed-won data first, server-side event data second, GA4 third, platform dashboards last. 
• Build a weekly reconciliation check (platform sum vs. CRM actuals), standardize UTM taxonomy across all campaigns, and surface CRM-verified CPA and pipeline in a single dashboard no ad platform controls. 
• Good enough attribution means UTM coverage above 90%, CRM source fields on 95%+ of closed-won deals, and platform data used for optimization only — never for budget justification.

Google Ads claims 47 conversions. Meta claims 52. LinkedIn claims 31. Your CRM shows 38 closed customers.

Someone is lying – and it’s not your CRM.

If you’ve ever pulled platform reports into a single spreadsheet and watched the numbers explode past anything resembling reality, you already know the feeling. The sum of what every platform claims credit for routinely exceeds your actual customer count by 50%, sometimes 100% or more. You’re not miscounting. You’re watching every ad platform grade its own homework.

When platforms grade their own homework, everyone gets an A+.

The over-counting is not a broken pixel or a misconfigured UTM. The over-counting is intentional—built into the incentive structure of every ad platform that sells you impressions and measures its own performance. According to Databox research on attribution, one in four GTM leaders said at least a quarter of last quarter’s pipeline was misattributed due to missing or incorrect click data. Nearly 7% reported error rates of 50% or more. 

In the same research, 32.43% reported spending 16–30 hours per month just cleaning and reconciling attribution data, before any analysis happens.

By the end of this article, you’ll understand why the numbers are structurally wrong, which data to trust and in what order, and how to build an attribution view that supports real budget decisions—not one that validates whatever each platform wants you to believe.

Why Every Platform “Wins” the Same Conversion

Attribution over-counting is a revenue model problem, not a data quality problem.

Every ad platform measures its own performance against the widest possible window it can defensibly claim. The result: summing all platform-reported conversions routinely produces 150–250% of actual closed customers. Three platforms, one customer, three conversions counted.

The mechanical cause is attribution window conflicts. Meta defaults to a 7-day click / 1-day view window. Google defaults to a 30-day click window. LinkedIn uses its own rules.

A prospect clicks a LinkedIn ad on Day 1. Clicks a Google Search ad on Day 12. Converts on Day 14. All three platforms count the conversion. None of them are technically wrong by their own rules.

View-through attribution is the most abused lever in the system.

On January 12, 2026, Meta permanently removed two attribution windows from its Ads Insights API: the 7-day view and 28-day view. The change was announced in October 2025. Most advertisers missed it.

The practical result: if you run awareness campaigns or target prospects with longer consideration cycles, a portion of your previously attributed Meta conversions stopped being counted overnight — not because performance dropped, but because the measurement window shrank. Industry analysis puts the conversion drop at 15–30% for accounts that relied on those longer view windows.

Then in March 2026, Meta reclassified what counts as a “click.” Likes, shares, and saves no longer trigger the 7-day click attribution window — only link clicks do. That’s a second, quieter conversion drop that most teams haven’t diagnosed yet.

If your Meta numbers look worse than Q4 2025 without an obvious performance reason, you’re likely looking at a measurement shift, not a channel decline. Before cutting Meta budget, run the CRM reconciliation check: how many closed customers does your CRM attribute to Meta over the same period? That number hasn’t changed. Only Meta’s count of it has.

A prospect sees (does not click) a Meta display ad, then searches your company on Google, then converts. Meta counts it. The mechanic is not fraudulent, but platforms default to having it enabled, and the numbers inflate in ways that benefit the platform, not your understanding of what actually happened.

The structural incentive is worth naming directly: these platforms have billions of dollars in quarterly revenue tied to demonstrating ROAS. Their measurement systems are not neutral observers. The same companies that sell you the impressions built the systems that measure whether those impressions worked. When the entity measuring performance is the same entity selling the product being measured, the measurement will favor the seller, every time.

Platform data is not useless. But it is unreliable as the sole measure of marketing’s contribution to revenue. The platforms were built to justify continued ad spend, while your job is to figure out what actually worked.

What Breaks When You Can’t Trust the Numbers

The attribution gap does not stay inside your spreadsheets. It cascades into every budget conversation, every channel decision, every forecast you hand to leadership.

Your VP of Marketing asks which channel to scale. You show them platform-reported ROAS, and LinkedIn looks like it’s outperforming Meta 3:1. But the CRM tells a different story: Meta-sourced leads close at twice the rate. The platform numbers pointed you toward the wrong channel.

Your CFO asks what marketing contributed to pipeline last quarter. You can give them platform numbers (which add up to more customers than you actually have) or CRM numbers (which require manual reconciliation you haven’t done). Neither answer builds confidence. And the reconciliation work is not trivial: in Databox’s Time to Insight survey, 64.29% of respondents said it typically takes 1–3 days to gather data to answer a single business question—long enough that in most weekly reviews, the decision window has already closed.

Your demand gen lead wants to cut underperforming campaigns. But “underperforming” according to which system? Google’s conversion count? HubSpot’s lead source field? The numbers don’t match, so the decision stalls.

The cost of broken attribution is not bad data. The cost is bad decisions, or no decisions at all.

Which Number Do You Trust? A Hierarchy for Attribution Data

When data sources conflict (and they always will) the answer is not to average them or pick the one that looks best. A deterministic trust hierarchy exists. Follow it.

Tier 1: CRM Closed-Won Data

CRM data is not modeled. Not estimated. Not subject to attribution window interpretation. Closed-won opportunity records, mapped to their original lead source via UTM-populated form fields or CRM source tagging, represent ground truth.

The CRM is the only data source that records a human being giving money to your company.

Every other data source should be evaluated against the CRM. If your CRM shows 38 closed customers and Google claims 47, the CRM is right. Always.

Tier 2: Server-Side Event Data

Server-side tracking (Meta Conversions API, Google Enhanced Conversions, server-side GTM) fires from your own infrastructure, not from a browser-dependent pixel.

Server-side tracking is more reliable than client-side tracking because ad blockers, cookie deprecation, and iOS ATT restrictions do not affect it. Server-side data is not ground truth, it still routes through platform identity matching, but it is the most reliable signal below CRM data.

Tier 3: GA4 Cross-Channel View

GA4 has no financial incentive to favor any channel – it’s is channel-agnostic. That makes it more trustworthy than any individual platform’s reporting when evaluating cross-channel performance.

Its limitations (cookie-dependent client-side tracking, underreporting under privacy conditions) are well-documented and consistent, which means GA4 can serve directionally even when absolute numbers are unreliable.

Tier 4: Platform-Reported Conversions

Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager. All useful for in-platform optimization signals: bid strategy, audience performance, creative testing.

Do not use platform-reported conversions as the measure of marketing’s contribution to revenue. Platform dashboards were not built for that purpose – they were built to justify continued ad spend.

The Weekly Reconciliation Check

A concrete, repeatable workflow surfaces most attribution integrity problems before they compound into bad budget decisions:

Once a week, pull total conversions from all active ad platforms. Compare the sum to new leads or closed-won deals in CRM for the same period. If the platform sum exceeds CRM actuals by more than 10–15%, flag it as a tracking quality issue—not a budgeting success.

Running the check weekly prevents the slow drift where platform numbers become the default reality and CRM data becomes an afterthought.

What a Decision-Ready Dashboard Actually Looks Like

Before walking through how to build the system, look at what the end state delivers.

A decision-ready attribution dashboard shows you four things in a single view:

CPA by channel (CRM-verified)

Cost per closed customer by channel, calculated using CRM closed-won data—not platform conversions. When Google says a lead cost $47 but your CRM shows the actual cost-per-customer from Google is $312, the dashboard shows $312.

MQLs and SQLs by source

Total qualified leads from each paid channel, pulled from your CRM’s lifecycle stage fields—not platform-reported “conversions” that may or may not reflect actual pipeline.

Pipeline and revenue by source

Total pipeline value and closed-won revenue attributed by lead source from CRM. The number your CFO actually wants.

Cost per MQL/SQL by channel

The metric that tells you whether LinkedIn at $180/MQL is actually outperforming Google at $95/MQL once you factor in conversion rates down the funnel.

A marketing team using this view discovered LinkedIn was driving 2x the CRM-verified pipeline of Meta at equal spend. They reallocated budget. Pipeline increased materially quarter over quarter. The insight was not perfect attribution—it was directionally correct attribution acted on consistently.

The platforms will keep grading their own homework, while the dashboard grades them against reality.

How to Build It

A functional attribution system does not require a data engineering team or a six-figure analytics stack. It requires four things done in the right order: clean inputs, a reliable event layer, a CRM as the anchor, and a single dashboard that no ad platform controls.

Standardize Your UTM Taxonomy

Every paid campaign across every platform should use a consistent UTM structure:

• utm_source: platform (google, meta, linkedin)
• utm_medium: paid-social, paid-search, display
• utm_campaign: campaign name
• utm_content: creative ID or variant

Standardize the taxonomy now, enforce it with a naming convention doc, and audit it quarterly. Without consistent UTMs, CRM lead source data is garbage. The entire hierarchy below it fails.

Implement Server-Side Tracking

Deploy Meta Conversions API and Google Enhanced Conversions. Both are free to implement (cost is development time, typically 1–3 days with a developer or via server-side GTM).

Server-side tracking recovers a meaningful portion of the signal lost to iOS ATT and cookie deprecation. It reduces the gap between platform-reported and CRM-verified conversions, not because it makes platform data more accurate in an absolute sense, but because it reduces modeled fill-in, which is where the inflation is worst.

Close the Loop in Your CRM

Every closed-won opportunity must have a mapped original source. Populate it from the UTM on the first form fill, the channel on the first touchpoint, or manual entry for high-touch pipeline.

HubSpot’s “Original Source” field and Salesforce’s “Lead Source” field are the minimum viable implementations.

Without CRM-level source tagging, Tier 1 data does not exist. Only platform data with extra steps exists.

Build the Unified Dashboard

The final step is surfacing the right KPIs in a single view that no ad platform controls. That challenge is more common than most teams expect: 73.13% of respondents in Databox’s Time to Insight survey identified data spread across multiple sources as their top reporting challenge, which is precisely the problem a unified attribution dashboard solves.

Databox connects your CRM (HubSpot or Salesforce), your ad platforms (Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn), and your pipeline data into a single dashboard—without requiring a data engineer or custom SQL. You can even get the full power over your data with datasets, which allows you to join tables, even between CRMs (as long as you have a common ID like email). You can calculate metrics like cost per MQL by dividing total Google Ads spend by MQL volume from HubSpot, then track the trend on a 12-week rolling scorecard.

Grab our pre-built paid ads dashboard templates

Track your Paid Ads metrics and KPIs and analyze your Paid Ads performance

 

Get the templates

If you’re also working on reducing wasted ad spend before you rebuild your attribution layer, this guide on cutting paid ad waste without losing pipeline covers the budget side of the same problem.

The specific capability that matters: you can build the CRM-verified view—the one that tells the truth—rather than toggling between three platform dashboards that were never designed to agree.

What “Good Enough” Attribution Actually Looks Like

The most paralyzing belief in marketing attribution is that it must be perfect before it can be used.

Attribution cannot be perfect. The goal is not precision, but direction.

A system that reliably tells you Channel A drives 3x the verified revenue of Channel B is worth more than a theoretically perfect model you have not built yet. The 10–15% CRM reconciliation threshold is not perfection. The threshold is signal integrity.

What “good enough” looks like in practice:

• UTM coverage on >90% of paid traffic (not 100%, it is not realistic)
• CRM source fields populated on >95% of closed-won deals
• Weekly reconciliation check running consistently
• One dashboard showing CRM-verified CPA and pipeline by channel
• Platform data used for optimization, not for budget justification

The platforms will keep grading their own homework. Your job is to build the system that grades them against reality.

Begin with the CRM. Build the reconciliation check. Surface the numbers that matter in a dashboard you control.

That is how you build an attribution view your CFO will actually trust.

The post The Ad Attribution Problem: Every Platform Claims Credit, Nobody Tells the Truth appeared first on Databox.

If your paid ads look fine in dashboards, but the pipeline isn’t growing, you’re not alone.

Ad costs are rising. Buyers are harder to influence. And metrics that used to signal success like clicks, leads, low CPL, don’t mean what they used to.
In a webinar we hosted, Devin Littlefield (CEO of Market Vantage) explained why the traditional paid ads playbook no longer works and how B2B teams are cutting wasted ad spend without sacrificing pipeline. This article covers the main ideas Devin presented during the webinar.

You can watch the webinar on demand.

TL;DR 

• Paid ads aren’t broken, but the old way of measuring them is
• Rising costs expose weak targeting and weak qualification faster
• Clicks, leads, and low CPL no longer reflect real performance
• The best teams measure paid ads by pipeline and sales acceptance
• Integrated, multi-channel campaigns outperform standalone paid ads
• Clear ICPs and sales alignment reduce wasted spend
• Experimentation only works when learnings change future decisions
• Cutting underperforming programs is necessary to improve results

Why the Paid Ads Playbook Has Changed

B2B teams often assume paid ads stopped working because ad platforms changed. In reality, the problem runs deeper than platform updates or new ad formats. Paid advertising has become harder because several structural shifts are happening at the same time. 

Google Ads CPCs are up roughly 13% year over year, while LinkedIn CPCs jumped as much as 147% between 2024 and 2025. At the same time, buyers increasingly educate themselves before engaging with sales. In fact, 94% of B2B buyers now use AI tools during the buying process, which means many prospects form opinions long before clicking an ad or filling out a form.

Despite these challenges, paid media still accounts for around 30% of total marketing spend. When a large share of the budget goes to paid ads, teams can no longer afford campaigns that look good on the surface, but fail to produce a real pipeline.

That pressure is only increasing. Our recent research shows that GTM teams are actively shifting more budget into paid media, with nearly half doing so specifically to offset declines in organic and inbound channels.

The outcome of the “old approach” is predictable: higher spend, lower returns, and declining lead quality. Paid ads now demand far greater precision. Teams that cannot clearly connect ad spend to pipeline and revenue are under more scrutiny and are often the first to face cuts when budgets tighten.

Integrated, Multi-Channel Campaigns Perform Better

Paid ads perform best when they work together with other channels, like SEO, email, and sales outreach. In these setups, paid ads reinforce messages prospects already see in other places. This consistency helps build familiarity, reduces friction when sales reaches out, and shortens the time it takes for buyers to move forward. As a result, paid ads become more efficient, even when costs are higher.

By contrast, running paid ads as a standalone growth lever is becoming increasingly inefficient, as they struggle to create meaningful momentum on their own.

Audience-First Segmentation Beats Keyword-First Targeting

One of the most overlooked opportunities in B2B paid advertising is proper ICP definition. Many teams jump straight into tactics, bidding on high-intent keywords, launching broad LinkedIn campaigns, or testing ad copy, without first being clear on who they are trying to reach.

Teams that consistently outperform define their ideal customer profile, map buying committees, and align messaging to specific customer pain points. While it may seem foundational, a strong understanding of the audience influences which keywords you target, how you structure campaigns, and how you evaluate lead quality. Without that foundation, optimization efforts tend to focus on surface-level improvements that don’t translate into better pipeline.

Sales Alignment Is a Must

Optimizing paid ads for sales-accepted leads instead of raw lead volume helps reduce waste and makes paid spend easier to justify internally.

Account-based marketing (ABM) performs well in B2B because it forces marketing and sales to align on target accounts, qualification criteria, and success metrics. It replaces volume with intent, so paid ads are aimed at accounts sales wants to win, not at everyone who might click, generating fewer, but better, leads. 

ABM is not a shortcut. It only works when account lists are well-defined, sales is involved, and paid performance is evaluated beyond lead volume.

The Metrics That Actually Matter in 2026

Companies often fall into designing paid ads dashboards to be reassuring rather than revealing, featuring metrics like click-through rate, cost per click, and cost per lead. These metrics do not show whether paid ads are driving business growth.

• The metrics that matter most today focus on outcomes, not activity. These include:
• Number and value of deals influenced by paid ads.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC), 
• Cost per lifecycle stage (such as sales-accepted leads and opportunities), 
• Lifetime value (LTV), 
• Return on ad spend (ROAS), 
• Payback period, and 
• Number and value of deals influenced by paid ads.

If paid spend cannot be tied to pipeline or sales conversations, optimization becomes guesswork. Teams may still see leads coming in, but they lack the insight needed to decide what to scale, what to cut, and where to invest next.

That’s why teams like Market Vantage blend paid ad data with HubSpot lifecycle and CRM outcomes in Databox. By combining Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, HubSpot Marketing, and HubSpot CRM data into a single scorecard, they can track paid performance from first click all the way through revenue.

Grab our pre-built paid ads dashboard templates

Track your Paid Ads metrics and KPIs and analyze your Paid Ads performance

Get the templates

 

 

The Framework That Wins: Reach Your P.E.A.K.

To make experimentation repeatable instead of chaotic, Devin introduced the P.E.A.K. framework – a simple way to test, evaluate, and scale paid ads based on real outcomes.

Plan starts with clarity. Teams define their ideal customer profile and buying committees, align paid goals to revenue targets, forecast budgets using realistic CAC and LTV assumptions, and ensure CRM and ad platforms are properly connected.

Execute is where testing happens. Campaigns are launched with multiple variants, including different audiences, messages, formats, and creative. Messaging stays aligned with sales and lifecycle stages to ensure consistency.

Analyze goes beyond lead counts. Performance is evaluated based on sales acceptance, pipeline influence, and where prospects drop out of the funnel.

Know is the step many teams skip. Learnings are applied decisively—underperforming campaigns are cut, successful approaches are scaled, and insights are carried across channels.

The key idea is simple: experimentation only matters if it changes future decisions.

Cutting Paid Ad Waste Requires Tough Decisions

One theme that came up during the webinar was the need to cut underperforming programs without hesitation.

B2B teams often keep campaigns running because they look “okay” in dashboards, they worked in the past, or because no one feels confident enough to turn them off. Over time, this creates a drag on performance and makes it harder to see what’s actually working.

However, cutting ruthlessly doesn’t mean cutting blindly. It means being clear about which metrics matter, evaluating campaigns against those outcomes, and being willing to shut down programs that don’t contribute to pipeline, even if they generate clicks or leads.

In the webinar, Devin shared how teams use pipeline signals, deal velocity, and sales acceptance to decide what to scale, what to pause, and what to kill entirely.

Want to See How Teams Make These Decisions?

In the webinar, Devin walks through real examples of how B2B teams:

• identify wasted spend
• decide when a campaign has run long enough
• cut programs without hurting pipeline
• and reallocate budget with confidence
  

If you’re struggling to decide what to scale, pause, or shut down, the full session is worth watching.

Watch the full webinar on demand. 

The post How B2B Teams Are Cutting Paid Ad Waste (Without Losing Pipeline) appeared first on Databox.

And while these metrics are all great, they only describe what was achieved – not what could have been achieved. Searches for your products or services obviously aren’t infinite things. But what does the ceiling for a given campaign potentially look like? Identifying this accurately can help you understand the scalability of your best performing keywords.

This blog will detail two commonly overlooked yet incredibly powerful metrics that can bridge this knowledge gap: impression share and click share. 

In this article, we will: 

• Clearly define these metrics.
• Cover some common use cases to help you tweak your campaigns.
• Describe how changes in your initial conditions can impact your analysis.

What Are Impression Share and Click Share Metrics?

Google defines click share as “the estimated share of all achievable clicks that you may have received”.

Impression share is basically the same thing but instead focused on how many views your campaigns achieved compared to how many views they could have achieved.  

These metrics offer helpful clues regarding what else you could capture if you were willing to increase your investments for a given theme or campaign. They can be incredibly powerful in establishing budgets and in forecasting potential performance outcomes – especially for those of us amidst 2025 budget planning season!

It’s important to note however that these metrics only account for current conditions (we’ll dive more into this in a bit). They are also only available for Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and Hotel campaign types. 

Simple enough, right? Next, let’s explore how we can use them to plan and optimize campaigns.

Using Impression and Click Share to Improve Campaign Performance

Forecast Growth Potential of Top-Performing Campaigns

Consider the following scenario: 

• Overall campaign budget = $10,000 / month, and we’re currently falling behind our monthly goal. We know we need to increase our spending pace, but we are unsure which of our campaigns should be prioritized.
  • The primary goal is to drive form submissions from a “Contact Us” page (our
    “conversion”).
    • Target cost per conversion (CPA) = $150.
  • Campaign A achieved 7 conversions at a $128 CPA in the past two months. 
  • Campaign B achieved 9 conversions at a $330 CPA during that same timeframe.  

Intuitively, many of us would want to optimize the campaign mix here to favor Campaign A over Campaign B, strictly due to how much stronger it performs from a CPA perspective. 

But…is it even possible to spend more? That’s where click share comes into play. 

Notice that Campaign A’s click share is already at roughly 82%, while Campaign B’s is <20%?

So, while Campaign A might be an attractive choice based on CPA alone, our click share indicates we have very little to grow. The well may not be entirely dry just yet, but it’s getting close. 

This isn’t as hyperbolic as it may sound. Commonly, ad accounts that blend branded keywords (let’s assume this is Campaign A) with non-branded keywords (let’s call this Campaign B) achieve similar results to those pictured above. Branded keywords can drive bottom-funnel actions like form submissions, e-commerce purchases, etc., but often drive a very limited number of searches.  

Evaluate Bid Strategy to Balance Scale and Efficiency

Let’s now consider a third campaign (Campaign C), experiencing seemingly contradictory things…

• Campaign C has the strongest CPA in the account (almost 3x stronger than our earlier described $150 CPA target). Cool!
• It’s capable of scaling, as is indicated by a low click share. Great!
• It’s coming nowhere near hitting the spending target we’ve assigned to it. Huh?!

It might be time to check your bids. You might be chasing a CPA that isn’t sustainable at scale.

It can be easy to fixate on achieving lower and lower conversion costs, especially if you’re trying to demonstrate quick wins. But try not to get greedy. If you undershoot it on your bids because you’re trying to guarantee a low CPA, you might be striking out at auction to your competitors. Consequently, your ads won’t show up as often as they could or should, even if the few clicks you are generating typically yield excellent conversion rates. 

If you find yourself in this predicament, you may want to consider walking your bids up – even if that in turn starts to increase your cost per conversion. Cheaper isn’t always better, especially if you’re leaving potential profitability on the table (uncaptured leads, forgone e-commerce purchases, etc.). Inevitably, we all must balance scale with efficiency. Click and impression share, combined with other KPIs in your Databox dashboards, can help you discover if such opportunity is indeed being missed.  

Spot Campaign Flaws with Click and Impression Share Insights

Let’s assume the worst is happening for a moment: your campaign has a low click share, it’s overspending, your CPA is garbage and so is your click-through-rate (CTR).  

But doggonit, you’re not ready to give up on it. Perhaps on some instinctual level you know this campaign is capable of achieving great things. Regrettably, it’s just flailing at the moment.

In this case, it’s not unreasonable to imagine there may be an oversight somewhere in how you’ve set up your campaign.   

This is a good time to audit your targeting settings and/or your ad creatives. Analyze your CTRs at the ad-level, your search terms reports, or even your quality scores to help pinpoint potential trouble areas. Perhaps your keywords don’t match your ad headlines. Maybe you’re accidentally targeting irrelevant geographies. Or perhaps your keywords are just too broad to capture relevant searchers. 

PPC experts are great at many things, but they are still very much human beings. Humans make mistakes. Click share, when combined with other measures like those described above, can help you identify if basic human errors are hindering a campaign’s potential for greatness. 

When Your Conditions Change, Your Analysis Should Change Too

As mentioned previously, click and impression share only describe what you could have achieved under current conditions. But what exactly are “current conditions”? Further, why would changes to them lead to a change in how we should analyze the data? 

You Expanded Your Audience

In simplest terms, the way targeting works in Google Ads is more about defining who you don’t want to see your ads than who you do want to see your ads. Their platform offers a variety of tools to carve their massive global audience down to only the narrowly defined group of users that you actually care about. In essence, each targeting lever you might pull on the backend is similar to a filter you might apply to a spreadsheet database of billions of individual contacts. 

Say you have geographically narrowed your audience – maybe your campaign is focused on a handful of European countries. Expanding your geographic targeting to include North and South America can instantaneously grow the number of people making it past your targeting filters in Google Ads. 

You might see a pattern similar to the following in the months that follow…

Notice how the impression volume starts leaping in June while the impression share decreases? If all things truly remained fixed as they had in May, this wouldn’t make much sense. These seemingly contradictory states indicate something about your targeting has changed – something that expanded your initially defined audience. 

These types of decisions can often be performed on the fly as we chase the latest conversion opportunity. It’s important to keep in mind though that this will likely alter how you should interpret your next click or impression share report. 

Your Competitors Increased or Decreased Ad Spend

Your competitor ad spend, much like your own, is likely not a flat, linear investment. It can go up and down in a given day, month, or even year depending on seasonality or general shifts in business priorities. As competitor ad investment fluctuates, so too will your impression or click shares. If your competitors are spending less, you are likely experiencing a boost in click and impression share. If they are spending more, your shares are likely going down. 

If you’ve ruled out changes you have directly made to your campaign as the culprit for shifts in click or impression share, there’s a good chance it’s related to your competitive landscape. You can confirm this with a quick look at “impression share lost” metrics using Databox’s custom metrics builder. These metrics offer a little more color regarding if and how you are losing ground to competitors at auction. 

Learn how to create custom Google Ads metrics in Databox in this article: Overview: Metric Builder for Google Ads.

Getting Started Monitoring Your Impression and Click Shares

Impression share and click share are two powerful metrics that many PPC managers often tend to neglect. Unlocking their potential can help you forecast and scale top performing campaigns, enhance your understanding of your competitive standing, and help you identify poorer performing ad settings. 

Like any other metric, these metrics should not be assessed in isolation. As you build out your Google Ads Databox dashboards, remember the question you are asking and how these metrics, if paired with others available (CTR, CPA, ad spend, conversion volume, etc.) can help answer them. Make sure you are also thinking critically about how changes to your initial targeting conditions or the competitive landscape can alter the results of your estimates and forecasts.

The post How to Use Impression and Click Share Metrics to Scale Your Google Ads Campaigns appeared first on Databox.

With many markets becoming overcrowded, staying front-of-mind for your ideal customers and keeping your marketing efforts affordable is super challenging. Paid ads are the go-to marketing channel for many industries as they generate excellent results, but what platform should you be using to optimize your costs and reach high-intent users?

Microsoft Ads and Google Ads both have pros and cons, so we asked 45+ marketing professionals to share their experience with these advertising platforms.

Here’s an overview of this guide:

• What’s the Difference Between Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising?
• Which Ad Platform is More Popular: Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising?
• Microsoft Ads or Google Ads: Which Platform Delivers More Value for Your Business?
• Common Challenges Marketers Experience with Microsoft Ads and Google Ads
• Final Verdict on Microsoft Ads vs. Google Ads

What is the Difference between Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising?

Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising are two of the most popular online advertising platforms, with distinct characteristics.

Google Ads dominates the search engine market globally, primarily focusing on the Google Search Network, including Google Search and Maps. It appeals to a broad audience and supports various ad formats like text, display, video, shopping, and app promotion ads.

On the other hand, Microsoft Advertising targets the Bing Search Network, which includes Bing search results and partner sites like Yahoo. While it has a smaller market share compared to Google, Microsoft Advertising can be a cost-effective option with potentially lower CPC. It often attracts an older demographic and users in specific industries.

Both platforms offer similar ad formats, including various keyword match types and ad extensions to enhance visibility. Google Ads has a more extensive reach due to placements on YouTube and the Google Display Network, while Microsoft Advertising primarily focuses on search-related ad placements.

The choice between the two depends on factors such as target audience, advertising goals, and budget considerations.

Which Ad Platform is More Popular: Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising?

We asked over 45 marketers to share their preferences in terms of Google Ads vs Microsoft Ads. Our respondents are from the following industries:

• Marketing and Advertising (36.73%)
• Professional Services (18.37%)
• SaaS, Software or Technology (18.37%)
• Other (26.52%)

More than half of our respondents are founders or CEOs. As per company size, about 70% of respondents have under 50 employees.

There’s no doubt Google Ads is the more popular advertising platform: our survey confirmed the assumption.

No companies use Microsoft Ads only, almost half of the respondents said they run Google Ads, but not Microsoft Ads, while over 50% of survey participants rely on both ad platforms to help them achieve their marketing goals.

Microsoft Ads or Google Ads: Which Platform Delivers More Value for Your Business?

When it comes to the most important features in an ad platform, most of our respondents top-ranked:

• Cost-Effectiveness
• Overall ROI (Return on Investment)
• Targeting Capabilities
• Conversion Rates

Let’s dive deeper into the features to see how they compare in each of the platforms.

1. Cost-Effectiveness
2. Overall ROI (Return on Investment)
3. Targeting Capabilities
4. Conversion Rates
5. Analytics and Reporting
6. Ad Reach and Audience Size
7. Ad Customization Options
8. Ease of Use
9. Innovative Features and Updates
10. Integration with Other Tools

PRO TIP: Here Is Your Go-To Dashboard for Monitoring Your Google Ads Campaigns in One Place

To monitor and improve the performance of your Google Ads campaigns, you can spend hours running a variety of reports and compiling selected metrics manually into one dashboard. Or, you can pull all your data automatically into one dashboard with Databox.

You can instantly review all of your campaigns and drill down on important metrics, such as:

1. Campaign overview. Which ads generate the most engagement? Get complete insight into your active Google Ads campaigns and easily track their performance.
2. Impressions. View the total number of times your ad was shown/seen on Google or the Google Network daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or within the specified date range.
3. Clicks. Visually monitor the number of clicks your ad receives daily. It helps track this data as it is a good indicator that your ad is compelling and valuable to the people who come across it.
4. Cost. How much do I pay for each click on my ads? See the amount you pay on average for each click your ad receives.
5. Conversions. How many users completed the desired action after clicking on my ads? Learn whether your ad clicks are resulting in users taking some desired action.
6. Cost per Conversion (CPC). How much on average does conversion on my ads cost? See how much you get charged for each desired action taken by a user after coming across your ad.

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Ads experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing all the key insights you need to optimize your Google Ads campaigns for conversion and ROI. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in PPC reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Ads account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

Cost-Effectiveness

Although Google Ads have a wider reach, giving you more opportunities to get your ad in front of your target audience, Microsoft Ads can turn out to be more cost-effective for narrower audiences and specific industries because of lower competition. Still, our survey participants ranked Google Ads as better, even when it comes to cost-effectiveness.

That doesn’t change the fact that Microsoft Ads can be an excellent, more affordable advertising alternative for businesses that aren’t using Google Ads or have specific audience requirements.

“Microsoft Ads gets often overlooked, while it offers significant advantages, particularly in terms of cost-effectiveness and reaching certain demographics that might be less present on Google,” says Waleria Pagowska of Brand24. “I would like to point out its integration with LinkedIn, which provides a unique edge, especially for B2B businesses. The lower competition on Microsoft Ads often results in a lower cost per click, making it an attractive option for businesses with tighter advertising budgets.”

“Microsoft Ads, while smaller in scale, provides a cost-effective way to target specific niches, which can be incredibly beneficial for focused marketing campaigns,” concludes Pagowska.

Expert Insights: There are some proven tactics to optimize Google Ads CPC, from using different landing pages and adjusting bids beyond keywords (location, device, schedule) to using ad extensions and different match types. We have surveyed 40+ experts, and they share their insights into lowering and optimizing Google Ads CPC.

Overall ROI (Return on Investment)

Marketers mostly agree that Google Ads bring a higher ROI than Microsoft Ads, thanks to its reach and visibility.

However, it often depends on the industry—if you’re targeting specific audiences that spend more time using Bing than Google, you’ll be able to leverage low competition and ad costs to generate a better return on investment.

“We deliver advertising on behalf of our health care clinic owners’ customers, in an agency model. I find that Microsoft Ads often deliver a superior ROI in some cases – if the customer is targeting an ideal patient aged 50+. We usually test Microsoft Ads at 10-20% of the overall ad budget to assess how the metrics compare to Google Ads,” Scott MacIntosh of Second Spring Digital Inc. comments.

Targeting Capabilities

Both Microsoft Ads and Google Ads allow users to target specific keywords and audiences based on location, gender, age, device, etc. But, each platform has its advantages for specific purposes.

For example, Google Ads may be more suitable for businesses with global audiences, since Google dominates the market and has a broader reach. The amount of traffic you may receive, especially when you leverage Google’s sophisticated targeting options, can contribute to a better ROI and lower advertising costs.

“Tapping the huge traffic volumes offered by Google Ads can’t be compared with Microsoft Ads distribution networks. More traffic combined with Google targeting options generates lower cost per conversion,” says Adam Ostapinski from UnAgency.

On the other hand, Microsoft Ads “have some clever features” that can help you “refine your target audiences and create more targeted campaigns,” according to Hannah Lydford of Headley Media. One of these features is certainly the integration with LinkedIn, allowing you to target users based on their profile on this social media platform, and making Microsoft Ads a great choice for B2B marketers.

Conversion Rates

While Microsoft Ads may be cost-effective for advertisers, Google Ads boast a higher conversion rate than ads run on Bing (3.75% and 2.94%, respectively).

Also, the amount of traffic your ads will receive on this platform is significantly lower than when running Google Ads. This can lead to you potentially paying more per conversion when using Microsoft Ads, so a high conversion rate may not always mean a good ROI.

However, your conversion rate will still depend on your industry and target audience. Ronald Dsouza of Book Marketeers shares his experience with the e-commerce and book publishing sectors.

“In my previous role in an e-commerce business, Google dominated with a staggering 90% of conversions, primarily due to its vast user base, making it conducive for selling products in bulk,” says Dsouza.

“However, when working with a niche service such as book publishing in my current position, we observed a distinct advantage on Bing. For businesses like ours, catering to a specific audience, Bing proved to be more effective in generating conversions.”

Expert Insights: It’s difficult to define what a good conversion rate for Google ads is as it can depend on many factors: your industry, campaign goals, time of the year, and more. We asked several marketing experts to share what they consider a good conversion rate—you’ll see how their answers vary depending on their experience, type of business, and more. However, based on our survey, most participants are happy with their conversion rates.

Analytics and Reporting

Google Ads offers robust analytics features that allow you to optimize your campaigns to the very last detail.

Pagowska chooses Google Ads as her preferred tool because “its integration with Google Analytics and advanced targeting options, including search behaviors and demographics, make it a powerful tool for businesses looking to make data-driven decisions and reach a diverse audience.”

Microsoft Ads are limited in terms of reporting and analytics, even though they offer some useful metrics and can represent a less demanding learning curve for beginners.

Expert insights: You can track your Microsoft advertising efforts in real time using Databox’s free Microsoft Advertising Overview Dashboard that features Impressions, Clicks, Ad performance, and more.

Ad Reach and Audience Size

As Google has a significantly higher market share, it allows you to reach wider audiences, and more people are bound to see your ad on a global level thanks to both Search Network and Display Network Ads—across all industries.

Google Ads proved invaluable to our music instruction business, providing unparalleled reach and precise targeting. Its dominance in online searches provided us with maximum visibility, connecting us with a diverse audience actively looking for guitar, ukulele, and charango lessons,” shares Kristi Dawn of Musicfinch.

With Microsoft Advertising, you’re likely to reach a limited number of people, but if you’re targeting Bing users or the older demographic, you may have an easier job standing out among competitors.

“The main benefit that companies gain from using Microsoft Ads in their advertising efforts is access to a unique audience that may not be as heavily targeted as those on Google,” explains Tarlia Smedley of Pulse Recruitment.

“Microsoft Ads reach users across the Bing and Yahoo networks, which includes a significant demographic that prefers these search engines over Google. This audience often comprises older and more affluent users, which can be particularly valuable for certain businesses and industries.”

Still, it seems that Google is unmatched for marketers, at least when it comes to the number of people you can reach.

“While Microsoft Ads has merits, Google’s sheer market share and sophisticated ad delivery mechanisms make it our primary driver for reaching and converting our audience. As we navigate the competitive landscape, Google Ads remains our go-to platform for maximizing visibility, engagement, and ultimately, business growth,” confirms Daniel Li of Plus.

Ad Customization Options

Google Ads offer comprehensive customization options for your ads, allowing you to target every segment of your audience with huge precision, which can lead to higher conversion rates.

However, while you can have custom intent when creating Google Ads, Microsoft Ads allows the creation of custom audiences, especially based on users’ LinkedIn profiles (industry, job title, etc.) This is an incredible advantage for B2B marketing.

“Microsoft Ads, for example, allows advertisers to target users based on job function, industry, and organization, exploiting the professional context provided by LinkedIn data,” Jeremy Mauboussin of Plagia Shield agrees.

“This is especially useful for B2B marketing tactics because it provides a more focused way to reach business professionals. The synergy with Microsoft’s broader ecosystem improves ad targeting precision and specificity, giving businesses unprecedented chances to customize their messaging for a professional audience.”

Ease of Use

While some marketers praise Microsoft Ads’ softer learning curve, others are already familiar with Google’s other tools, so they find Google Ads easier to use.

That’s the case for Suzanne Bucknam of Connecticut Explorer.

“For what we do in my company, the best advertising platform for us is Google Ads because it’s simple, it’s tailored, and it’s effective. While I don’t mean to throw Microsoft under the bus, in my experience I have just found that Google is more in touch with the advertising needs of smaller business owners,” says Bucknam.

“Google is likely used more by smaller organizations because it has a simple yet effective suite of applications. There’s no need to pay for an enterprise pack, no need to make an entire 360, Outlook, and Office account. You just have one Gmail tied to the account and others can easily access it. This ease translates into their advertising branch. It’s clean, simple, and insightful. You can customize to your heart’s content with or without applying the insights Google gives you, but they always have something new to offer to help you build your reach,” concludes Connecticut Explorer’s Suzanne Bucknam.

Innovative Features and Updates

Both Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising are highly innovative platforms, and both continuously introduce updates to enhance their features and functionality. However, there are some differences in terms of innovation and update frequency.

Google Ads is known for its constant innovation and introduction of new features. It often leads the way in developing cutting-edge advertising technologies and rolling out updates and new features regularly. The platform’s expansive user base drive a frequent release of improvements and innovations.

Microsoft Advertising is also innovative, focusing on providing advertisers with effective tools and features, such as ad extensions, that can positively impact your ad CTR. While it may not always be the first to introduce certain features, it strives to stay competitive and meet the evolving needs of advertisers.

Integration with Other Tools

Both Google Ads and Microsoft Ads have comprehensive integrations, each with its corresponding ecosystems. Which one will provide more value to your business depends on your current toolkit.

“Google Ads has brought a lot of value to our business; this is primarily due to the fact that Google Ads offers easier integration with many of the other tools and platforms we use, increasing our overall marketing effectiveness,” Eugene Koplyk of Wiserbrand shares his thoughts on Google Ads.

On the other hand, Jeremy Mauboussin has experience with Microsoft Ads.

“The integration with Microsoft’s ecosystem, which includes Windows, Office, and LinkedIn, is a noteworthy benefit that businesses can receive from using Microsoft Ads. Advertisers may now take advantage of key demographic and professional targeting options thanks to this connection,” says Mauboussin.

And what about CPC and CTR?

Take a look at the table below to also see the median values for Average CPC and CTR for both platforms based on the data from Databox Benchmark Groups.

According to data provided by Google Ads Benchmarks for All Companies, the median value of Average CPC in November 2024 was $1.33.

When it comes to CTR, our data showed that it had a median value of 4.31% across various industries in November 2024.

Numbers are slightly lower when it comes to Microsoft Ads: based on the data provided by Microsoft Advertising Benchmarks for All Companies, the median value of Average CPC in November 2024 was $0.97.

In November 2024, Microsoft Ads users recorded a median CTR of 2.14% across industries.

If you’re interested in comparing your performance to companies similar to yours and leveraging valuable data to position your business in front of your prospective customers, join our Benchmark Groups today—it’s free of charge and completely anonymous.

Common Challenges Marketers Experience with Microsoft Ads and Google Ads

While there are many benefits that can help one of the platforms in the Microsoft Advertising vs. Google ads battle, there are also several challenges marketers face when running ads.

Most of our survey respondents stated that they’ve experienced the following issues when running Google ads:

• High advertising costs (71.43%)
• Complexity in platform navigation (64.29%)
• Poor customer support (53.33%)

When running Microsoft Ads, our survey participants faced the following problems:

• Difficulty in targeting the right audience (83.87%)
• Limited ad customization options (77.42%)
• Inaccurate or insufficient analytics (76.67%)
• Poor customer support (66.67%)
• Complexity in platform navigation (53.57%)

Industry Trends

The past several years have witnessed considerable changes in advertising due to major trends that have changed the way Google Ads and Microsoft Ads work. In order to remain competitive, both Ads platforms have made adjustments in consideration of the following important trends:

Ad Innovation Through Automation and AI

In this day and age, the traditional, “non-automated” approach to Advertising is no longer is practical. Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads have also taken steps towards improvement automation AI technology in order to ease campaign management and boost other performance metrics. 

Google Ads: Performance Max campaigns by Google utilize Performance Max strategies to enhance marketing efforts by automating advertising across Search, Display, YouTube, and Gmail. These campaigns apply automatic optimization to creatives, targeting, and bids, enabling marketers to spend less time and achieve better results. Along with this, Google AI gives astonishingly accurate audience forecasts to advertisers, helping them optimize their advertising budget. 

Microsoft Advertising: Microsoft has also invested a lot of their resources into AI. Through Audience Network, Microsoft is using predictive modeling to serve targeted ads to potential buyers. Microsoft Advertising integrated with LinkedIn recently became even smarter, allowing advertisers to bid and place targeted ads while automatically adjusting campaign parameters.

Both of these sites seem to improve these functions as AI audience segmentation and creative testing are now everyday activities. In this case, advertisers make use of automation not only out of necessity, but also to target the ads and fine-tune the performance with unmatched accuracy.

Changes in Privacy and What Effect They Had

The recent focus on securing user data and privacy has created a significant change in digital marketing. Some of the most notable ones are:

Elimination of cookies by third parties: Advertisers have had to learn new strategies for tracking users without the use of cookies because Chrome has plans to stop using third-party cookies in 2024. Google Ads came out with Privacy Sandbox to allow targeted advertising without invading users’ privacy. Microsoft Advertising, on the other hand, incorporated new enhanced consent management features for GDPR and CCPA compliance.

Data from the first party: First party data now strategies are also embraced by both platforms. Ads from Google increased their Customer Match features, also Advertisers using Microsoft are motivated to manipulate the company’s data to create custom audiences and target them.

Analytics evolution: Changes in privacy controls have also changed how advertisers analyze the performance of their campaigns. Privacy regulations have not only increased, but also made both users and advertisers shift to more accountable ways of looking at data, thus now both platforms use private compliant tools that are based on aggregated information.

Types and Technologies In Ads That Are New

2025 has seen the introduction of novel advertising formats aimed at gaining attention, the innovation of new and engaging ways for advertisers to capture attention is Ad Formats: Google Ads now suggests AI-generated ad copy and Microsoft Advertising provides AI-generated pictures and videos. Advertisers can now create professional quality advertisements at the click of a button.

Augmented Reality (AR) ads: Everyone is working on integrating AR technology to add different dimensions to the advertising space, Google is ahead of Microsoft in this regard with AR shopping ads in The Google Search Network. Microsoft Advertising is now starting to adopt the use of AR in campaigns for certain sectors like real estate and retail using Bing Visual Search.

Interactive video ads: Video advertising is more productive than before, featuring shoppable videos. Both advertising platforms offer video ads that can be shopped directly from the ad.

Overall, these are significant strides forward toward AI, privacy-compliance tools, and ad formats, making 2025 an exciting new year for advertisers using Google and Microsoft platforms.

Competitor Landscape

The race to the top among advertisers has placed immense pressure on established companies such as Google and Microsoft since the arena for advertising on search engines is fiercely contested. New and emerging companies, however, seem to be covering unprecedented ground and each one provides significant value to advertisers in a myriad of ways.

Amazon Ads

Ecommerce companies have especially benefitted from the ever-increasing sales and popularity of Amazon Ads. The platform utilizes Purchase Intent Data remarkably well to enable advertisers to focus on users that are most likely to convert. The platform also boasts of highly efficient advertising formats such as Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands, which serve ads and drive sales optimally.

TikTok Ads

Brands that tend to target the youth have immensely benefitted from Tik Tok’s unprecedented growth. The advanced ad platform on TikTok provides top tier reach and engagement thanks to its engagement driven algorithm. Short video ads on TikTok are great for discovery, allowing brands to go viral with Gen Z and Millenials in a forge genuine connections.

Meta Ads (Facebook/Instagram)

Without a doubt Meta remains a top competitor in the arena of advertisement on social platforms. Advanced target options, strong retargeting, and eye catching formats continue to ensure Meta’s dominance when it comes to Social media advertising. Meta remained at the forefront of the advertisement sphere in 2025 by focusing on Reels and using AI to place ads more strategically on the platform.

The Usual Aspects The advertisers’ scope of work is broader than ever before, each with specific strands to focus on. Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising spearhead the search sector. Amazon Ads is number one in the world of e – commerce. The social media engagement on TikTok and Meta is unmatched therefore they join the field as well. In the end, it all depends on your marketing objectives, the industry you are part of, and who your audience is. A combination of all strategies can be used to maximize your ROI in 2025.

Final Verdict on Microsoft Ads vs. Google Ads

According to our respondents, Google Ads were ranked as better than Microsoft Ads in all segments, including cost-effectiveness.

This consensus could be attributed to Google Ads’ extensive reach, dominant global market share, and continuous innovation in digital advertising. The larger user base on Google Ads, encompassing platforms like Google Search, Maps, and YouTube, offers advertisers unparalleled access to a diverse audience, contributing to the perceived effectiveness of campaigns.

While this feedback proves Google Ads’ popularity, individual preferences and campaign goals may require a nuanced decision.

Advertisers should assess their specific needs, target demographics, and campaign strategies to determine whether Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising aligns more closely with their unique objectives. Both platforms offer distinct advantages, and the choice between them should be based on a careful evaluation of factors such as audience reach, innovation, and competition.

Stay on Top of Your Ad Campaign’s Performance with Databox

As Ronald Dsouza of Book Marketeers puts it, “the takeaway is clear: the choice between Google and Bing hinges on the unique characteristics of your product or service and the target audience you aim to reach.”

Regardless of which platform you choose to run your campaigns on (or even if you choose both), Databox has got you covered.

We simplify business analytics by providing access to in-depth, real-time data about your performance, automated, streamlined reports, customizable dashboards, and much more.

You can easily connect over 100 of your favorite tools through simple, one-click integrations and set up alerts for metrics and goals that matter to you, so you can react timely whenever you’re off track or have an opportunity to seize.

Instead of wasting precious hours on building complex reports and loggin in and out of platforms to get the data, tracking your performance in a bunch of spreadsheets, and waiting until the end of a campaign to see what you could have done better, you can make data-driven decisions faster and easier.

Access time-saving dashboard templates, automate your performance reporting, and visualize your progress in one screen with Databox—sign up for your free account today and take your performance monitoring and reporting to the next level.

The post Microsoft Ads vs. Google Ads: Which Platform to Choose in 2025? appeared first on Databox.

And if you’re only relying on your own data and have no insight into how your competition is performing… things get that much harder.

Are your ads getting enough clicks? Is your profit margin in line with what others in the industry are saying?

These are just some questions you’ll need answers to in order to optimize your PPC strategies accordingly.

That’s why in this report, we examined PPC advertising metrics such as clicks, CTR, CPC, and impressions, across all the biggest PPC advertising networks like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads and compiled benchmarks that can shed more light on the competitive landscape right now.

For more insight into other benchmarks, you can join our Benchmark Groups for free and get instant access to a variety of groups most relevant to your business.

We’ve divided the insights into:

• Impressions
• Clicks
• CTR
• CPC

Impressions

First, let’s start with the number of impressions advertisers are seeing across the board:

• Google Ads Impressions
• Facebook Ads Impressions
• LinkedIn Ads Impressions

Google Ads Impressions

Across all industries, the median number of impressions on Google Ads for October 2023 was 42.87K.

Let’s take a closer look at Google Ads impressions across different industries:

Apparel & Footwear and Ecommerce and Marketplaces have the highest number of impressions, indicating a strong focus on Google as an advertising platform.

Apparel & Footwear present regular purchases and consumers frequently browse online for the latest trends and deals. This is especially true in the last few years in which we’ve seen a huge shift toward online shopping.

And Ecommerce platforms, in general, cater to a wide range of products, making them a common destination for online shoppers that are looking for different products – from dog toys to beauty products.

Expert recommendation: Are you taking advantage of responsive search ads (RSA) on Google Ads? This feature can be a great way to quickly find winning headlines and copy and boost your Google Ads impressions. You write several headlines and Meta descriptions that you want to test out, and then let Google automatically test the different combinations to optimize for the best-performing ad.

Facebook Ads Impressions

Across all industries, the median number of impressions on Facebook Ads for October 2023 was 250.71K.

Let’s take a closer look at Facebook Ads impressions across different industries:

Again, we see Apparel & Footwear and Ecommerce & Marketplaces industries record the highest number of impressions on the platform. One big reason for this could be the visual appeal of Facebook.

These two industries often involve visually appealing products and industries that can showcase their products through high-quality images or videos tend to attract more attention on Facebook.

Facebook Ads generally show higher impressions across industries compared to Google and LinkedIn, indicating a wider reach or higher user engagement on Facebook.

Expert recommendation: If you haven’t used it before, try out the “Reach” objective to potentially increase your number of impressions with Facebook Ads. Most brands opt for the Brand Awareness campaign and never even experiment with the reach option. But if you have quality creative, good copy, and top-notch images, there’s a good chance you’ll reach a larger number of people.

LinkedIn Ads Impressions

Across all industries, the median number of impressions on LinkedIn Ads for October 2023 was 54.07K.

Let’s take a closer look at LinkedIn Ads impressions across different industries:

When it comes to LinkedIn Ads, Information Technology and Services show a strong presence, which is in line with LinkedIn’s professional network nature.

LinkedIn is primarily used by professionals for networking and career-related activities.

Industries related to information technology and technology services are inherently tied to professional development, making LinkedIn a natural fit for advertising in these sectors.

Expert recommendation: Want to stay on top of your LinkedIn Ads performance? In that case, you’ll need to track a lot more than impressions. But unfortunately, LinkedIn’s campaign manager doesn’t make the monitoring process easy on the users. Users tend to spend more time collecting data than actually analyzing it. But with our LinkedIn Ads Campaign Performance Dashboard, that’s not an issue anymore. You can compile all of your most relevant insights into one comprehensive dashboard and then make them even more understandable by transforming the data into professional visuals.

Clicks

Next up, let’s check out how many clicks businesses are recording.

• Google Ads Clicks
• Facebook Ads Clicks
• LinkedIn Ads Clicks

Google Ads Clicks

Across all industries, the median number of clicks on Google Ads for October 2023 was 1.18K.

Let’s take a closer look at Google Ads clicks across different industries:

Apparel & Footwear lead in clicks, aligning with their high impression rates. In the second spot, we have Ecommerce & Marketplaces with 5.39K clicks in October.

It’s not surprising that these two industries have the highest number of clicks seeing that they outperform other industries by a wide margin when it comes to impressions.

Expert recommendation: If you’re looking for a streamlined way to manage your Google Ads performance data and stop monitoring key metrics in spreadsheets, you can download our Google Ads Dashboard Template. In this customizable template, you can drag and drop your most relevant Google Ads metrics and track changes as they occur in real time. No more slouching over several spreadsheets to figure out what’s going on with your numbers.

Facebook Ads Clicks

Across all industries, the median number of clicks on Facebook Ads for October 2023 was 2.77K.

Let’s take a closer look at Facebook Ads clicks across different industries:

Just like with Google Ads, we can notice similar trends with Apparel & Footwear getting more clicks on Facebook Ads as well.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have Health & Wellness with the lowest number of clicks (779). This can be because the Health & Wellness industry is often subject to strict regulations and compliance requirements.

Advertisers in this sector may face limitations on the type of claims they can make or the language they can use in their ads, which can impact the overall effectiveness of the campaign.

Expert recommendation: You’re probably using social proof on your landing page, but are you leveraging it on the Facebook ad as well? Using social proof in the first touch point of your ad can be a great way to increase your CTR and get more people into your funnel. Especially nowadays, when users are looking for more credibility and trust before they engage with a certain brand and purchase their products.

LinkedIn Ads Clicks

Across all industries, the median number of clicks on LinkedIn Ads for October 2023 was 452.

Let’s take a closer look at LinkedIn Ads clicks across different industries:

On LinkedIn Ads in general, we’re seeing fewer clicks, possibly due to its more niche and professional audience.

Users might be more selective about the content they engage with, and ads may need to be particularly relevant and targeted to capture their attention.

Expert recommendation: On PPC platforms like Facebook and Google, hyper-targeting is usually a good idea. But that’s not always the case with LinkedIn. On LinkedIn Ads, one best practice is to limit your targeting to two specific options (not including the location). This way, you’re not limiting your reach on LinkedIn. If your audience is too narrowly defined, your ads may not be shown to a sufficient number of users, reducing the overall visibility of your campaign.

CTR

What about the click-through rate (CTR)? Let’s see how businesses are performing with this metric.

• Google Ads CTR
• Facebook Ads CTR
• LinkedIn Ads CTR

Google Ads CTR

Across all industries, the median CTR on Google Ads for October 2023 was 3.8%.

Let’s take a closer look at the Google Ads CTR across different industries:

The Travel & Leisure industry has the highest CTR on Google Ads and part of the reason for this is that many users that search these keywords have high commercial intent.

People actively searching for travel-related information are likely to click on ads that closely match their search intent.

Health-related industries (Healthcare and Health & Wellness) have also shown impressive CTR in our research.

Expert recommendation: One great way to secure more clicks on your Google Ads is to utilize ad extensions. Not only are you taking up more valuable space, but you’re also able to provide more information about your business and solutions to your potential customers. For example, if you’re a local business, you can use ad extensions to directly provide a phone number or customer reviews.

Facebook Ads CTR

Across all industries, the median CTR on Facebook Ads for October 2023 was 1.63%.

Let’s take a closer look at the Facebook Ads CTR across different industries:

On Facebook Ads as well, Travel & Leisure has the highest CTR. This suggests better audience targeting or visually attractive content.

The travel industry often involves visually stunning destinations and seeing that Facebook is a highly visual platform, engaging imagery or videos of exotic locations can capture users’ attention and prompt them to click.

Facebook also offers robust targeting options, allowing advertisers to tailor their ads to specific audiences based on their travel history, interests, or online behavior, making the ads more relevant.

Expert recommendation: No matter what industry you’re in, it’s rare for users to buy something from your ads after just one touchpoint. That’s why retargeting is so crucial in boosting your Facebook Ads CTR. Retargeting on Facebook can boost your CTR by re-engaging users who have previously visited your website or interacted with your content. By targeting this audience, you’re reaching users who have already shown interest, increasing the likelihood of getting a click.

LinkedIn Ads CTR

Across all industries, the median CTR on LinkedIn Ads for October 2023 was 0.74%.

Let’s take a closer look at the LinkedIn Ads CTR across different industries:

For LinkedIn Ads, no specific industry in our research stood out and none have a CTR higher than 1%.

Expert recommendation: If you’re running video ads on LinkedIn, make sure you use subtitles. There are two reasons for this – the default option on LinkedIn videos is “mute” and people generally start the video with the audio turned off. And considering how crucial those first few seconds are, you don’t want to risk the audience missing your initial hook.

CPC

Lastly, let’s talk about the CPC on these different platforms.

• Google Ads CPC
• Facebook Ads CPC
• LinkedIn Ads CPC

Google Ads CPC

Across all industries, the median CPC on Google Ads for October 2023 was $1.22.

Let’s take a closer look at the Google Ads CPC across different industries:

Health Care and Health & Wellness have higher CPC, potentially due to strong competition.

The Health Care and Health & Wellness industries are typically competitive, with numerous businesses fighting for attention. Increased competition can drive up CPC as advertisers bid against each other for premium ad placements on the network.

Expert recommendation: Google wants to make sure users have the best possible experience on their platform, which means you’ll need to improve your ad relevance if you want to lower your Google Ads CPC. The best way to do this is to ensure that your keywords are closely related to your ad copy and landing page content. Another big factor is to craft compelling ad copy that aligns with the intent of the user’s search query.

Facebook Ads CPC

Across all industries, the median CPC on Facebook Ads for October 2023 was $0.44.

Let’s take a closer look at the Facebook Ads CPC across different industries:

Similar to Google Ads, Health Care and Health & Wellness industries also lead Facebook Ads when it comes to CPC (both over $1).

The travel industry has a broad target audience, allowing for more extensive targeting options. Advertisers can reach a wide range of people, potentially resulting in lower CPC.

Plus, the travel industry often experiences seasonal fluctuations in demand. During off-peak seasons like October, advertisers may face less competition, leading to lower CPC.

Expert recommendation: Are your ads engaging? Are there any areas for improvement? What metrics need to be optimized ASAP? Getting answers to these questions can be difficult if you’re only tracking your performance through the Facebook Ads Manager. Luckily, there’s an easier way to do it – download our Facebook Ads Campaign Performance Dashboard. In just a few minutes, you can compile all of your key Facebook Ads metrics in one place and track your performance from one place. No more digging through several reports to get the information you need.

LinkedIn Ads CPC

Across all industries, the median CPC on LinkedIn Ads for October 2023 was $3.37.

Let’s take a closer look at the LinkedIn Ads CPC across different industries:

For LinkedIn Ads, Health Care and Real Estate have the highest CPC, aligning with the platform’s professional focus.

Both Health Care and Real Estate industries often require highly targeted advertising to reach specific professional audiences. The nature of these industries may lead advertisers to narrow down their audience criteria significantly, resulting in a smaller pool of potential clicks but a higher CPC.

But for both industries, the potential customer lifetime value is often high. Advertisers are willing to invest more in acquiring a customer because the long-term value of that customer can justify higher advertising costs.

Expert recommendation: Many businesses overlook ad scheduling on LinkedIn Ads for some reason. But if you use it properly, it’s possible to see lower CPC on the platform. To do this, you need to analyze your audience’s behavior patterns and see at which time they’re likely to be active on LinkedIn. Then, use this data to schedule your ads to appear during the high-traffic periods.

PPC B

FAQ

The post PPC Industry Benchmarks for 2024 appeared first on Databox.

Other than looking at how much you gain back from the ads you run on Google, how can you know if your campaigns are efficient? Do they convert enough? What numbers should you aim for?

When comparing your conversion rate against industry benchmarks, context matters just as much as the number itself. A small dip may look concerning until you see how it aligns with seasonal patterns, campaign changes, or shifts in cost-per-click. Teams now use AI data analysts, like Databox MCP (https://databox.com/mcp), to ask simple questions such as why conversion rates dropped last month or which campaigns improved efficiency. Because it works with your actual metrics and historical performance, it can explain changes clearly and help you interpret trends without guessing.

That’s exactly what you’re going to learn in this article. Find out what you can count as conversion, how to improve your conversion rate, and discover a way to compare your performance directly against your peers.

• Google Ads Conversion Rate Definition
• Google Ads Conversion Rate Formula
• What Qualifies as a Conversion Activity?
• What’s the Average Google Ads Conversion Rate?
• What is a Good Google Ads Conversion Rate?
• 5 Best Practices to Improve Your Conversion Rate for Google Ads

Google Ads Conversion Rate Definition

Conversion rate for Google ads is the percentage of website visitors that complete a desired goal per ad interaction. What you’ll count as a conversion depends on your business goals: it can be anything from a call to your store to a signup or purchase of your product.

Tracking Google ads conversion rate is important because it helps you discover keywords and phrases that your customers use to find products or services like yours, which can boost your other marketing efforts.

You should also measure Google ads conversion rate to optimize your ad spend because you’ll know exactly which ad sets work, and which don’t.

Finally, you’ll learn more about how your customers interact with your ads, like what devices they use.

If your conversion rate for Google ads is high, that typically indicates that your targeting is on point, your ad copy is compelling, and that your offer is attractive to your customers. If it’s low, some aspects of your campaign aren’t working as they should be, so you should think about adjusting your messaging, budget, or CTAs. More on these tactics in the “best practices” section.

Related: Google Ads Click-Through Rate (CTR): What’s Considered “Good” and How Can You Increase It?

Google Ads Conversion Rate Formula

You can easily calculate your conversion rate by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of interactions you can track to a conversion within the same period of time.

Conversion rate = (conversions / total visitors) * 100%

For instance, if 10 visitors converted out of 1,000 who interacted with the ad, you’d divide 10 by 1,000, and your conversion rate would be 1%.

Note that sometimes you may end up with a conversion rate over 100% as multiple conversions might be counted for every interaction that happens on your ads.

You will see this happen when you:

1. Track multiple conversion actions, or
2. Select “Every” conversion in your Google ads account.

What Qualifies as a Conversion Activity?

Brand awareness and lead generation are two common marketing goals. For each, you’ll likely be measuring a different set of metrics to evaluate your success. To track these metrics correctly, you need to define the conversion point for the particular campaign you’re running. So, depending on your goal, you might consider some very different activities as conversions.

When a website visitor does any of the following, you can count in as a conversion:

• Makes a direct online purchase
• Upgrades their current subscription plan
• Books a call/demo
• Contacts your company via phone call
• Signs up for a free account on your website
• Requests a quote
• Signs up for a newsletter
• Downloads a gated asset

What’s the Average Google Ads Conversion Rate?

According to Databox’s own Benchmark data, the average conversion rate for Google Ads is 2.85%. This benchmark was calculated from anonymized data from over 2000 companies. Do you want to benchmark your PPC performance, including Impressions, clicks, average CPC, CTR, conversion rate and more, against other companies like yours? Join the Benchmark Group for free.

Databox also surveyed 65 businesses to see how others perform compared to the data we have.

Our respondents are mostly in marketing (46% of them), followed by business and industrial (16.92%), and several more industries.

More than 98% of our respondents use search ads, while 71% also use display ads.

Most of our survey participants report a 3.1-6% conversion rate for search ads.

For display ads, the conversion rate is between 0 and 1%.

The average conversion rate across all industries for search ads is 4.2%, while for display ads, it’s 0.55%.

What is a Good Google Ads Conversion Rate?

It’s difficult to define what a good conversion rate for google ads is as it can depend on many factors: your industry, campaign goals, time of the year, and more. We asked several marketing experts to share what they consider a good conversion rate—you’ll see how their answers vary depending on their experience, type of business, and more.

Overall, most participants in our survey are satisfied with their Google Ads conversion rates.

“For me, anything above 5% is good. There are a few reasons for this: first, Google Ads is a very competitive space, so to be able to have a conversion rate above 5% means that you’re doing something right; second, the average conversion rate for all industries is only about 2.9%, so anything above that is good,” says Nicole Pav of Nccuttingtools.

“I would say that a 10% or better Google Ads conversion rate is respectable. The average conversion is somewhere around 3%, so a 10% rate would indicate that your ad content is compelling enough to convert significantly more than many of your competitors.”

Adam Rossi

CEO at TotalShield

Want to get highlighted in our next report? Become a contributor now

Generally, marketers agree on one thing: the answer depends.

“Conversion rates vary across Google Ads accounts, and a more important metric is conversion value divided by cost, which shows the actual return on ad spend,” claims Robert Eppinger of MaxAd.

“Generally, you should see a 5-10% conversion rate in high-performing ad accounts. However, there are many cases where it can be under 5%, and the ad account is still in great shape. For example, selling high-ticket items or a B2B service requiring a considered customer purchase and lengthy sales cycle. Here the ad account generates leads, and once the sale is complete, the conversion value is pushed from the CRM back to the ad account to show the return.”

“It depends on the business type and CTA. For a high value offer to consumers, we’ve seen conversion rates between 5% and 30%. In B2B we’re looking at less than 10% for the most part, and very low for any CTA that asks the visitor to book time on their busy calendar (demos, free trials, meetings, free consultations, etc.),” reveals Tommy Landry of Return on Now.

“I’m going to share an unpopular answer: there are so many factors that affect Google Ads conversion rates such as retargeting data, prospect target data, creative, time of year, macroeconomic factors, brand reach and perception, price and offer. So even in the same industry, the “good” conversion rate can be completely different. No blanket answer is right. However, it is a good metric to monitor when managing Google Ads.”

Alyssa Yap

Director & HubSpot Consultant at Gather’n’Grow

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5 Best Practices to Improve Your Conversion Rate for Google Ads

If you’re not seeing the figures you’re happy with, we have good news. There are a few tactics you can use right away to improve your conversion rate for Google ads. We surveyed a number of marketing professionals to find out what their go-to tricks are:

1. Provide a Compelling Landing Page Experience
2. Get Creative with Your CTAs
3. Leverage Negative Keywords
4. Test Different Ad Variations
5. Wait and See Before Modifying

1. Provide a Compelling Landing Page Experience

A compelling ad is critical when it comes to attracting your customers’ attention. However, to ensure a conversion, every step from the ad to the final activity (for example, a purchase) should be optimized, including your landing page. Simple design and powerful messaging will help you convert visitors who already feel enticed enough to click on your ad.

“Landing page improvement. We can send qualified users to a website all day, but if they’re met with a frustrating site experience, it doesn’t mean much,” says Sam Underwood of Futurety.

To improve your conversion rate and the results of your campaigns, examine your landing page to determine which elements can be enhanced for a better user experience.

Michael Perry of Fitness Fixed Gear shares that ads and landing pages need to be aligned. “You can’t merely make a promise in your ads and then break it on your landing page. Even worse, you advertise something while offering something else on your landing page,” says Perry.

“For instance, you broadcast a 20% discount while providing a 10% discount. To make a smooth transition, there must be continuity from your ads to your landing page. Low conversion rates will result from confused visitors that eventually leave your site. It is a surefire way to lose your money.”

PRO TIP: Here Is Your Go-To Dashboard for Monitoring Your Google Ads Campaigns in One Place

To monitor and improve the performance of your Google Ads campaigns, you can spend hours running a variety of reports and compiling selected metrics manually into one dashboard. Or, you can pull all your data automatically into one dashboard with Databox.

You can instantly review all of your campaigns and drill down on important metrics, such as:

1. Campaign overview. Which ads generate the most engagement? Get complete insight into your active Google Ads campaigns and easily track their performance.
2. Impressions. View the total number of times your ad was shown/seen on Google or the Google Network daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or within the specified date range.
3. Clicks. Visually monitor the number of clicks your ad receives daily. It helps track this data as it is a good indicator that your ad is compelling and valuable to the people who come across it.
4. Cost. How much do I pay for each click on my ads? See the amount you pay on average for each click your ad receives.
5. Conversions. How many users completed the desired action after clicking on my ads? Learn whether your ad clicks are resulting in users taking some desired action.
6. Cost per Conversion (CPC). How much on average does conversion on my ads cost? See how much you get charged for each desired action taken by a user after coming across your ad.

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Ads experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing all the key insights you need to optimize your Google Ads campaigns for conversion and ROI. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in PPC reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Ads account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

2. Get Creative with Your CTAs

Specific and unusual CTA copy that shows your audience exactly what they will be getting can drive more conversions than the old, boring “sign up” or “click here.” People act on emotions so if a CTA button prompts an emotional response in your visitors, they will be more likely to click.

For example, you may react to “Discover your escape” rather than to “Explore vacation homes”: the “your escape” phrase triggers images in your head as you read the CTA and you immediately start imagining what the escape would look like for you.

“We find that switching away from generic CTAs like “Sign up” creates a more emotional response, more clicks, and more conversions,” agrees Maximilian Wühr of FINN.

“We’ve experimented with limited-time offers and discount rates to increase conversions, using CTAs like “Sign up and save 20%” or “Limited time offer – save 20% now.” Customers who understand what they’re getting or giving up are more likely to convert ASAP. By A/B testing different CTAs, you’ll quickly see which performs best for your brand,” explains Wühr.

3. Leverage Negative Keywords

Reaching the right people is just as important as sending out the right message about your business. If you’re aiming for more purchases, the right people are those ready to buy, with a high purchasing intent, not those who are at the awareness stage, only browsing through the web.

Using negative keywords will help you ensure your ads will be shown to the right people only, which can increase your conversion rate.

“When you employ negative keywords, your advertisement will not appear when people search for such terms. This is important if you’re wanting to restrict your ad so that it doesn’t appear for those who are simply looking and not ready to purchase,” explains Zephyr Chan of Better Marketer.

“Some advertisers, for instance, use “free” as a negative phrase. If your site does not offer free products or trials, you may want to add this as a negative keyword to reduce the number of visitors who are only seeking free products. People who hunt for free items are typically less inclined to make purchases,” says Chan.

Matthew Martinez of Diamond Real Estate Group confirms using negative keywords is his tactic for ensuring high-quality leads.

“We started testing the use of negative keywords so our ads won’t show up when people search for those particular keywords. We do this to limit the ad so that it doesn’t show up for people who are just browsing around and aren’t ready to purchase anything yet. We want high quality and motivated leads! Google Ads show us how well the individual keywords are doing, but it can also show you the exact words that our customers searched for when our ad showed up.”

4. Test Different Ad Variations

Split testing is one of the key activities for every marketer: unless you test different variations of design, copy, CTA positioning, and other elements of your campaigns and landing pages, you won’t know what works best to attract leads. A/B testing is also crucial for improving your conversion rate.

“If you are running an ad to appear when someone searches for “emergency plumber near me”, then your ad should direct them towards where they can get help from an emergency plumber, not to your homepage or an unrelated service page. They just want to see your emergency number.”

Jess Percival

Digital Marketer at Exposure Ninja

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Rory Mason of 21 Degrees Digital agrees: “It’s very easy to make assumptions with Google Ads. At 21 Degrees, we take out the assumption by testing different copy, creatives, bid strategies and keyword targeting to ensure that we build on any successes and continually improve. In this regard there is not one thing that has dramatically increased performance but incremental changes to the campaign that constantly perform and generate a stronger ROI,” concludes Mason.

5. Wait and See Before Modifying

When you introduce a change to your marketing strategy or a campaign, it takes time until you see if the change generates the desired effect. If you measure the results and make new adjustments too quickly, you won’t be giving your campaigns enough time to improve.

“We let new campaigns run as is for a little while before we start making changes, as we want to see what the benchmark is for that specific account. Once that is established, it’s about narrowing down and researching. What terms are we bidding on & what are we actually showing up for? Would testing another campaign format help with lifting performance?” advises Ameet Khabra of Hop Skip Media.

Karan Rawal of Ace Infoway believes balancing campaign objectives with the budget you have is crucial, especially if it’s limited, because you need to spend enough to see meaningful results.

“The advertising budget is often arbitrary. Instead of basing the advertising budget on a percentage of revenue, our marketers base the campaign budget on either what is available or on a budget we are comfortable with,” says Rawal.

“But is it enough to see results? The truth is, no. Very low budgets are problematic for the following reasons: 1. Your campaign doesn’t cost enough to last long. 2. Your spending is too low to generate enough clicks. 3. Your campaign may not generate enough traffic and may not see a conversion rate. The third is particularly important.”

Benchmark Your Paid Ads Performance Against Hundreds of Companies Like Yours

Knowing your conversion rate is great. Knowing how your conversion rate compares to your last year’s results is better. But knowing how your conversion rate compares to your competitors’ performance is the best!

Have you ever wondered how your marketing stacks up against your competition? Or if your sales reps are closing as many deals as your competitors’ reps?

We found a way to help you answer these questions. Benchmark Groups allow you to learn how you compare to others in your industry in a simple way, instantly, and for free.

You can get:

• Real-time insights into how your performance stacks up to the performance of companies of similar size and from your industry
• A deep understanding of what areas you excel in and what activities you need to double down on to improve your results
• Extensive context for making data-driven business decisions and improved strategic planning

You can access Benchmark Groups for free. Other companies won’t be able to see your performance as the data is 100% anonymized. You’re free to opt-out at any time.

Did we mention that as a Benchmark Groups user you also get access to a free Databox plan? And if you already use Databox, you don’t need to reconnect your data sources to get started.What’s not to like? We can’t think of a single thing, and if you can’t either, it’s time to explore all the benefits of Benchmark Groups. Sign up for a free trial and start building context around your performance.

The post What Is a Good Google Ads Conversion Rate and How to Improve It? appeared first on Databox.

The answer seems to be straightforward –

At the top of the search results page. That’s where you want to see your ads in 2024.

But among the increasing competition, budget constraints, and decisions based on guesswork rather than data, this isn’t an easy undertaking.

If you’re determined to become data-driven, you don’t have to dig around alone. Databox has done extensive research through surveys to get you the latest statistics on how to make sure your Google Ads are converting and driving sales and revenue in 2024.

Here are the 23 findings we’ve identified.

1. Median Number of Impressions for Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies
2. Median Number of Clicks for Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies
3. Median Value of CPC for Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies
4. Median Value of CTR for Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies
5. Median Conversion Rate for Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies
6. Median Number of Conversions for Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies
7. Median Cost of Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies
8. Most Companies Use Google Ads for Lead Generation
9. Target CPA and Maximize Conversions Are the Most Common Priorities
10. Most Marketers Use up to 5 Metrics on the KPI Dashboard
11. Marketers Divided: 52% Choose Facebook, 45% Prefer Google
12. Most Companies Find Responsive Search Ads Most Effective for CTR
13. Top Strategies for Improved CTR: Keywords, Copy, and Headline Optimization
14. Over 10 Recommended Tools for PPC Keyword Forecasting
15. Most Companies Focus on High-Intent or Branded Keywords
16. Ad Quality and Relevance Crucial for Google Ads Cost Management
17. Budgeting, Campaign Monitoring, and Bid Adjustment Are Key Tactics for Spend Control
18. 70% of Companies Choose Search Ads When Limited to One Type
19. More Than 50% Say Google Ads Smart Bidding Saves Time
20. Most Marketers Use Ad Platforms Other Than Google Ads, Too
21. Top 5 PPC Metrics: CTR, Cost Per Conversion, Cost Per Lead, Cost Per Acquisition, Conversions
22. Common Issue Causing High CTR and Low CR: Disconnect Between Ad Copy and Landing Page
23. Monitoring CTR, Traffic, Budget, Quality Score, and Audience Are Key for PPC Analysis

Median Number of Impressions for Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies

While impressions are essential for brand exposure, it’s crucial to balance them with other Google Ads metrics like CTR, ad quality, and targeting to ensure your advertising campaign’s success. We analyzed several of our surveys to extract the data on Google Ads impressions for both B2B and B2C companies. The results are the following:

• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for B2B Companies, the median number of Impressions in September 2023 was 31.09K
• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for B2C Companies, the median number of Impressions in September 2023 was 22.62K.
• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for All Companies, the median number of Impressions in September 2023 was 31.96K.

Pro tip: Databox offers a wide range of customizable dashboard templates where you can track your ads performance in real-time. Get this Google Ads Dashboard Template where you can track how often your ads have been displayed to Google users within a specified time frame in combination with other relevant metrics, like clicks, average CPC, conversions, and more.

Median Number of Clicks for Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies

Clicks in Google Ads represent user engagement with your ads and are essential for measuring the success of your advertising campaign and achieving your goals. We’ve gathered benchmark data for ad clicks:

• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for B2B Companies the median number of Clicks in September 2023 was 1.1K.
• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for B2C Companies the median number of Clicks in September 2023 was 1.09K.
• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for All Companies the median number of Clicks in September 2023 was 1.29K.

Pro tip: Monitor your Google Ads campaign clicks in this customizable Google Ads Campaign Performance Dashboard Template. This dashboard answers your questions about how many clicks the ads generated, how much it costs you to acquire a new customer, how many ad interactions resulted in conversions, and more.

Median Value of CTR for Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies

CTR assesses the effectiveness of your ads in encouraging users to click. A high CTR is generally a positive sign of ad relevance and engagement. Here are our September benchmarks for different industries when it comes to Google Ads CTR:

• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for B2B Companies, the median value of CTR in September 2023 was 4.5%.
• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for B2C Companies, the median value of CTR in September 2023 was 5.56%.
• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for All Companies, the median value of CTR in September 2023 was 4.6%

Pro tip: Regularly review the keywords used in your campaign, refine them, and add negative keywords. This way, you’ll eliminate irrelevant searches and clicks, improving your CTR and the overall performance of your Google ads.

Median Value of CPC for Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies

Your Google Ads CPC is influenced by various factors, including competition, ad quality, keyword selection, and bid strategies. Understanding and optimizing CPC is essential for managing your advertising budget and achieving your campaign objectives. Our data shows the following:

• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for B2B Companies, the median value of CPC in September 2023 was $1.38.
• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for B2C Companies, the median value of CPC in September 2023 was $1.37.
• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for All Companies, the median value of CPC in September 2023 was $1.30.

Pro tip: You can implement different tactics to try and lower your CPC, like optimizing your ads for beyond keywords. Instead of paying for your ads to appear everywhere, at all hours, on all devices, optimize the campaigns for specific locations, devices, and timings based on your previous data.

Median Conversion Rate for Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies

Conversion rate is a critical metric for assessing the success of your ad campaigns in driving user actions. High conversion rates indicate that your ads are effectively persuading users to take desired actions. Our benchmark data shows the following median values for Google Ads conversion rate across industries:

• The median Conversion Rate in September 2023 was 2.91%.
• The median Conversion Rate in September 2023 was 5.59%.
• The median Conversion Rate in September 2023 was 4%.

Pro tip: A compelling CTA can help boost the conversion rate in your next Google Ads campaign. Instead of using the generic “learn more” or “buy now”, try to get creative. For example, include the discount the user is able to claim if they sign up and say: Sign up and save 20%.

Median Number of Conversions for Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies

Conversions refer to the actions that indicate user engagement and commitment to your business or offer. Our data revealed the following statistics across different types of companies:

• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for B2B Companies, the median number of Conversions in September 2023 was 41.37.
• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for B2C Companies, the median number of Conversions in September 2023 was 62.
• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for All Companies, the median number of Conversions in September 2023 was 58.

Pro tip: To make sure you use every opportunity to convert a user into a paying customer, make sure you paint the right picture about what problem your product or service are solving for the user. You’ll achieve that by focusing on benefits, not features in your ad. For example, telling a user a laptop has a 4-core processor doesn’t mean much, but telling them their laptop won’t freeze when they have multiple windows open surely will.

Median Cost of Google Ads for B2B and B2C Companies

Google Ads costs depend on multiple factors: competition, quality score, bidding strategy, and more. The numbers varied across companies and industries in September 2023:

• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for B2B Companies, the median Cost in September 2023 was $1,595.09.
• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for B2C Companies, the median Cost in September 2023 was $1,741.39.
• According to Google Ads Benchmarks for All Companies, the median Cost in September 2023 was $1,805.07.

Pro tip: Use A/B testing when running ads to discover which combination of copy, image, and CTA brings the best results. By identifying low-performing elements of your ads and modifying or eliminating them, you can stop your budget from being spent on ineffective campaigns.

Note: For more granular data for your industry, check out our Google Ads Benchmarks by Industry report where you’ll find data from May 2023.

PRO TIP: Here Is Your Go-To Dashboard for Monitoring Your Google Ads Campaigns in One Place

To monitor and improve the performance of your Google Ads campaigns, you can spend hours running a variety of reports and compiling selected metrics manually into one dashboard. Or, you can pull all your data automatically into one dashboard with Databox.

You can instantly review all of your campaigns and drill down on important metrics, such as:

1. Campaign overview. Which ads generate the most engagement? Get complete insight into your active Google Ads campaigns and easily track their performance.
2. Impressions. View the total number of times your ad was shown/seen on Google or the Google Network daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or within the specified date range.
3. Clicks. Visually monitor the number of clicks your ad receives daily. It helps track this data as it is a good indicator that your ad is compelling and valuable to the people who come across it.
4. Cost. How much do I pay for each click on my ads? See the amount you pay on average for each click your ad receives.
5. Conversions. How many users completed the desired action after clicking on my ads? Learn whether your ad clicks are resulting in users taking some desired action.
6. Cost per Conversion (CPC). How much on average does conversion on my ads cost? See how much you get charged for each desired action taken by a user after coming across your ad.

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Ads experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing all the key insights you need to optimize your Google Ads campaigns for conversion and ROI. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in PPC reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Ads account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

Most Companies Use Google Ads for Lead Generation

Over 40% of surveyed companies use Google Ads dominantly to generate more leads, while 30% use them dominantly to drive direct sales. Small percentages of companies use Google Ads for brand awareness and reach or website traffic.

Pro tip: If you’ve set a specific number of leads as a goal, tracking how many your ads have generated in a spreadsheet will be daunting. Instead, try Databox’s goal tracking feature and visualize your progress in real time. This way, you’ll be on top of your numbers at all times and able to react promptly if you notice any of your goals are off track.

Target CPA and Maximize Conversions Are the Most Common Priorities

More than 20% of respondents focus on either Target CPA or Maximize for conversions while setting a bid for their Google Ads Campaign. Less than 20% of surveyed companies opted for Target ROAS.

Pro tip: Kick off your Databox trial to activate the holistic Google Ads PPC Performance Dashboard Template, and track key metrics—cost, average CPC, conversions, and more—in one place.

Most Marketers Use up to 5 Metrics on the KPI Dashboard

Most marketers only use 3, 4, or 5 metrics on their KPI dashboard. Around 30% of survey respondents shared that they track between 6 and 10 Google Ads KPIs.

Pro tip: If you wait until the end of your campaign to check its performance, you miss the opportunity to tweak it while it’s running to ensure better results. Databox offers a simple way to monitor your campaigns in real-time. Our KPI Tracking has two incredible features: Alerts, which notify you if your metrics are underperforming, and Insights, which update you about your team’s activities and deliver recommendations on how to improve your performance.

Marketers Divided: 52% Choose Facebook, 45% Prefer Google

Just above 52% of marketers say that their audience is more likely to engage with ads on Facebook than Google. Still, 45% voted for Google, which isn’t a percentage to be ignored either.

Pro tip: Facebook Ads are better if you’re targeting a very narrowed-down audience and you aim for specific demographics, location, interests, and behaviors. These ads may get you more exposure for less money. However, if you’re advertising to a broader audience with a clear purchase intent, you’re more likely to see conversion happen if you choose Google Ads. Learn more about how Facebook Ads compare to advertising on Google.

Most Companies Find Responsive Search Ads Most Effective for CTR

For about 80% of the surveyed companies, Responsive Search Ads have the best CTR. Video ads are the second most popular choice.

Pro tip: Responsive ads allow you to use various combinations of headlines and descriptions to reduce ad fatigue and ensure maximum ad efficiency. RSA are great for every buyer’s journey stage, so make sure you understand the user’s intent when searching and tailor your ad messaging to align with where the user is in the buying process.

Top Strategies for Improved CTR: Keywords, Copy, and Headline Optimization

According to our survey respondents, the top 3 tactics to improve CTR for Google Ads include:

• Reviewing keywords
• Improving the copy
• Optimizing the headline

Pro tip: Effective ad copy should contain these three key elements: 1. A clearly stated product or service, 2. Why the user should choose you (the benefit), 3. A compelling CTA. If you’re experiencing writer’s block, check out these 11 examples of great ad copy to inspire you.

Over 10 Recommended Tools for PPC Keyword Forecasting

According to surveyed advertisers, there are more than 10 recommended tools for PPC keyword forecasting. The top five choices by our survey respondents include: Google Ads Keyword Planner, Google Analytics, Google Trends, Ahrefs, and Google Performance Planner.

Pro tip: Experts typically recommend mixing up forecasting tools as different platforms may be more suitable for different buyer’s journey stages. For example, start with Google Trends to understand how search interest evolved over time. Then, switch to the Keyword Planner to explore more detailed data on volume and build out your forecast. Remember that Databox enables one-click integrations for all these tools so you can easily monitor any metrics from several platforms in a single screen.

Most Companies Focus on High-Intent or Branded Keywords

When it comes to prioritizing keywords, most prioritize based on either high search intent or branded keywords. Low-intent and competitor keywords didn’t rank high on the list of priorities.

Pro tip: Targeting high-intent and branded keywords ensures that your target users will see ads relevant for their query. This affects your overall ad relevance positively and boosts your CTR. A simple way to make sure the right ads appear for the right keywords is to categorize keywords into ad groups.

Ad Quality and Relevance Crucial for Google Ads Cost Management

According to our respondents, the quality and relevance of ads impact the cost of Google Ads the most. Trends, competition, and industry are other most relevant factors that can influence how much you’ll spend on Google Ads. 

Pro tip: Use ad scheduling to control your ad cost by choosing when your ads will be displayed to users. Analyze your campaign data to find any patterns in performance based on various times throughout the day, or days in a week. Aim for peak hours with higher conversion rates and periods with lower competition.

Budgeting, Campaign Monitoring, and Bid Adjustment Are Key Tactics for Spend Control

As for the primary strategies to control Google Ad Spend, our respondents voted setting a budget (a daily or monthly budget), monitoring campaigns, and adjusting (lowering) bids for different keywords and ad groups as the top three ways.

Pro tip: To make sure you’re not losing clicks to your competitors, get this Google Ads (Competitive Health) Dashboard Template to monitor how much you’re being charged per click. This customizable dashboard offers other relevant metrics that visualize your overall ad performance, such as Clicks, Impressions, and CTR.

70% of Companies Choose Search Ads When Limited to One Type

Over 70% of our respondents, if limited to a single type of ad, would run Google Search Ads rather than Display Ads.

Pro tip: If you can’t decide whether to run display or search ads, this little cheatsheet should help:

Display ads are better for building awareness, remarketing, consumer products, and driving down cost per lead (CPL). Search ads are better for lead generation, driving sales, setting display ad budget, and consumer services.

More Than 50% Say Google Ads Smart Bidding Saves Time

More than 50% of those who use it think that the main benefit of Google Ads Smart Bidding is that it saves time. Other mentioned benefits include accessibility for inexperienced users and allowing you to “set and forget” your campaign.

Pro tip: If you’re a B2B company with a regular volume of conversions, you can undoubtedly save time by removing manual bidding from the Google Ads setup equation. Use Smart Bidding for campaigns with bottom-funnel conversion goals, such as Target Cost per Acquisition, to leverage AI to do the bidding for you. 

Most Marketers Use Other Ad Platforms, Too

Most of the marketers we surveyed use other paid ad platforms in addition to Google Ads. They mainly go to social media. More than 80% use Facebook Ads, almost 50% use Instagram Ads, and about 44% use LinkedIn ads.

Pro tip: Did you know you could monitor your ad campaigns from several platforms in one screen? Databox can do this for you: if you’re running, for example, paid ads on Google and Facebook, you can track your campaigns next to each other to access insights in real-time and faster, so that you can optimize you budgets and invest in the platform that brings better results.

Access this Facebook Ads & Google Ads Dashboard Template and track metrics like impressions, cost, clicks, CPC, sessions, and more.

Top 5 PPC Metrics: CTR, Cost Per Conversion, Cost Per Lead, Cost Per Acquisition, Conversions

While the PPC metrics companies track vary based on the company’s goals, the top five most popular PPC metrics were click-through-rate (CTR), cost per conversion, cost per lead, cost per acquisition and conversions.

Pro tip: No matter which metrics you choose to track, Databox’s Metrics Screen offers an opportunity to monitor all of them in a single dashboard, without jumping back and forth between screens and tools. You will be able to identify trends faster, quickly find any metric, and customize your dashboard based on your needs—in one click. You can also compare your campaign performance to previous periods and set alerts to notify you if any metrics or your progress towards the goals are off track.

Common Issue Causing High CTR and Low CR: Disconnect Between Ad Copy and Landing Page

According to our respondents, the most common reason why a campaign might have high CTRs and low conversion rates is a disconnection between the landing page and the copy of the ad.

Pro tip: If you’re seeing a high CTR, but a low conversion rate, look into your landing page. Common fixes include improving design and page load speed. The landing page should have a clear flow and minimal navigation to let the user focus on the key CTA, which should be repeated several times on the page. Make sure the ad copy and the landing page copy are aligned and convey the same message.

Monitoring CTR, Traffic, Budget, Quality Score, and Audience Are Key for PPC Analysis

CTR, traffic, budget, quality score, and audience are the top five things to look at in a PPC analysis. 50% and more of the companies we spoke to agreed that they monitor these metrics.

Pro tip: Monitoring and reporting on your ad campaigns doesn’t have to be a long, repetitive process that takes up too much of your valuable time. Databox’s dashboard reporting tool allows you to quickly build visually appealing and easy-to-understand reports that are automatically shared with your team and accessible on any device.

Track Your Google Ad Campaigns with Databox

From goals to metrics, Databox helps you monitor and understand the performance of your Google Ads campaigns at a glance.

With no-code, streamlined, and customizable dashboards, our platform allows you a complete, granular overview of your most important metrics, and most importantly—you get to see the data in real-time. Our business intelligence solution brings all your numbers—from 130+ data sources—to one screen so that you can make more accurate decisions faster.

No more spending hours on building reports and endless copying and pasting from different tools. No more trying to understand when your campaign got off track only after it’s ended. No more manual sharing of reports with all the stakeholders.
Tracking performance with Databox is more complete, faster, and easier. Join 20,000+ businesses that have already improved their campaigns with our tools—sign up for free trial account today.

The post 20+ Must-Know Google Ads Statistics to Inform Your Strategy in 2024 appeared first on Databox.

Just because one of your keywords tops your list now doesn’t mean that it’ll be outshined by another in the future. This principle works the other way around, too — future power-keywords could fly under your radar because they aren’t doing well today.

Due to PPC keywords’ dynamic nature, you should add regular Google Ads forecasting to your ad management routine. In this blog post, you’ll learn what this practice is, what tools you should use for it and what you can do to optimize it.

• What Is Google Ads Forecasting?
• What Are the Best Tools for Google Ads Forecasting?
• 6 Tips for Improving Your Google Ads Forecasting Accuracy

Keep reading to get insights from advertising experts across the world.

What Is Google Ads Forecasting?

Google Ads forecasting is the practice of predicting future keyword performance based on previous data. It’s also known as PPC keyword forecasting.

Some folks use this term only to refer to PPC keyword forecasting performed through the Google Ads Keyword Planner. But, for the purpose of this blog post, we’re talking about forecasting keywords for your Google Ads campaign using your preferred tool.

Whatever term you use, Google Ads forecasting is as much of an art as it is a science. It uses numbers and data, but you need to choose the keywords and data you want to examine.

What Are the Best Tools for Google Ads Forecasting?

We consulted professional PPC advertisers for their opinions on the best tools for PPC keyword forecasting. They named more than 11 options:

As you can see, the most popular tools come straight from Google itself — Google Ads Keyword Planner, Google Analytics, and Google Trends. That’s great news to hear if you don’t have room in your budget for paid technology.

The advertisers we polled had extra comments to share about these forecasting tools:

• Google Ads Keyword Planner
• Google Analytics
• Third-Party/Manual Forecasting

PRO TIP: Here Is Your Go-To Dashboard for Monitoring Your Google Ads Campaigns in One Place

To monitor and improve the performance of your Google Ads campaigns, you can spend hours running a variety of reports and compiling selected metrics manually into one dashboard. Or, you can pull all your data automatically into one dashboard with Databox.

You can instantly review all of your campaigns and drill down on important metrics, such as:

1. Campaign overview. Which ads generate the most engagement? Get complete insight into your active Google Ads campaigns and easily track their performance.
2. Impressions. View the total number of times your ad was shown/seen on Google or the Google Network daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, or within the specified date range.
3. Clicks. Visually monitor the number of clicks your ad receives daily. It helps track this data as it is a good indicator that your ad is compelling and valuable to the people who come across it.
4. Cost. How much do I pay for each click on my ads? See the amount you pay on average for each click your ad receives.
5. Conversions. How many users completed the desired action after clicking on my ads? Learn whether your ad clicks are resulting in users taking some desired action.
6. Cost per Conversion (CPC). How much on average does conversion on my ads cost? See how much you get charged for each desired action taken by a user after coming across your ad.

Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Ads experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing all the key insights you need to optimize your Google Ads campaigns for conversion and ROI. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in PPC reports!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Ads account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

Google Ads Keyword Planner

Let’s let Brian Stewart from ProsperoWeb, LLC introduce Keyword Planner’s forecasting tool: “The Google Ads forecast tool can assist you in determining how well your keywords will perform in optimal conditions. You can adjust your maximum cost per click (CPC) based on your budget, check a graph of your expected performance, and see estimates for individual keywords with this tool. You can vary the time period of your forecast to see how it affects your forecast by changing the date range.”

Best of all, every feature is free. You only need to pay for the ad bidding you already perform in Google Ads.

“Google claims to update its estimates daily, using data collected from the past 10 days. The forecast tool is a complex feature of Google Ads, demonstrating how helpful the advertising medium as a whole is,” Condo BlackBook’s Sep Niakan says of the forecasting tool’s potential.

Niakan also explains how to use Keyword Planner’s forecasting features. “You’ll click on “Get search volume and forecasts” within the Google Ads Keyword Planner,” Niakan tells us first. That option should look something like the below screenshot.

“After that, input your keywords and click on Get Started,” Niakan instructs us next. This is what the input box will look like:

Here’s what Niakan wants you to know after you’ve input your keywords:

“There will be other tabs available, but you must stay on the predicting tab. As per the keywords you entered, Google Ads will automatically show you the following:

• Clicks per day
• Impressions
• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Average cost spend per day for a specific keyword
• Average CPC (cost per click)

Moreover, the tool will show you a data chart that forecasts the upcoming trends. This assists you in determining the best course of action for future efforts, as well as determining whether or not existing efforts should be adjusted depending on customer searches and behavior.”

In other words, the “Get search volume and forecasts” feature tells you how a keyword is performing now and predicts what its metrics will look like in the future.

“The tool will give you forecast data for each keyword such as impressions, the click-through-rate, the clicks per day, the average projected daily spend amount, and the average amount you might pay for an ad click. Adding your own conversion metrics can customize the forecasts to your brand,” adds Tori Bell of Clever Touch Marketing.

Putting it all together, you can plug multiple keywords into Keyword Planner’s forecasting tools to get present data and future predictions. Then, you can adjust the finer details as needed and add your own metrics for more accurate forecasts.

Google Analytics

At Creatopy, Diana-Alina Aldea supplements Google Keyword Planner’s forecasting capabilities for paid keywords with Google Analytics’ organic keyword metrics.

“Here I check affinity categories, in-market segments, locations and queries, but from all sources, not only paid traffic, to see which opportunities I’m missing in my PPC efforts. To make most of the data I’m seeing, I try to go more in the past, if possible (three or six months),” Aldea says.

If you don’t already, you should factor organic search data into your campaigns’ keyword structure. In fact, we’ve recommended that tactic before for PPC keyword research. Since customers are already searching for high-ranking organic keywords, make sure to see if any will impact your campaign.

Third-Party/Manual Forecasting

A few respondents pointed out that they use more niche forecasting tools or generate their own PPC reports.

“So, I use a couple of tools to forecast and manage my Google PPC accounts,” says Newaz Chowdhury of Powerphrase. “Jepto is one tool that I use to manage and forecast my ad spend for my client accounts. It shows what I’m spending and what results I can get if I keep with the current ad spend. It gives me the insights of our PPC budget and KPI management.”

The Powerphrase team also uses Morphio, a tool with similar features to Jepto. “It also shows us the traffic and conversion rate too. User-friendly interface to read and understand the data that’s being shown.”

Wikijob’s Edward Mallet is a fierce advocate for affordable third-party tools and manual reporting. “For an easier and faster forecast report, you might use a third-party PPC campaign reporting platform. Alternatively, you can create your forecast and projection reports by hand,” Mallet suggests.

“You can develop data tables to forecast short-and long-term projection consequences if you want to pull the data manually. Although it is impossible to predict the future with 100% accuracy, you can identify elements that may have a favorable or negative impact on ROI by combining CPC analysis and historical trend data,” Mallet says of manual reporting.

So, if you want to try manual reporting, you’ll still need to reference your campaign performance data and Keyword Planner metrics. This method can offer more control and access to version histories, though. You’ll just need to get used to drawing your own predictions from the data you have.

Mallet offers the following advice for updating your reports: “Some data will require more frequent updates than others. CPC data, for example, can vary more quickly than industry trends and should be updated every week or month in your prediction report, depending on how frequently you execute campaigns. For longer-term predictions, assess the best days and times of years for specific keywords using year-long trend data (or longer) to get the best results over time.”

If you manage ads on a large scale or have in-house reporting software, the Google Ads API will help you make your own forecasting tools. The API documentation has more information on generating forecast metrics in your custom solution.

6 Tips for Improving Your Google Ads Forecasting Accuracy

The advertising professionals we polled shared six tidbits of Google Ads forecasting advice. 

Don’t fret if you have a small biz ad budget when reading these tips. The respondents come from a wide range of advertising budgets, skewing toward $5,000 a month or less. In fact, 27.4% work with less than $3,000.

Dig into the tips below:

1. Start With Organizational and Market Data Trends
2. Adjust for Your Bidding Behavior
3. Think of It as a Projection Instead of a Forecast
4. Mix Up Your Forecasting Tools
5. Account for Future Growth
6. Start With a Budget or Reverse-Engineer It

1. Start With Organizational and Market Data Trends

As with most practices in marketing and advertising, good Google Ads forecasting begins with thorough research. You should know your organization and competition inside-out before choosing any keywords.

“Gathering relevant and accurate data is the first step,” Miranda Yan from VinPit affirms. “I track data like CPC, monthly spend, conversion rate, etc., and analyze [my] competitors. Keeping industrial trends in mind and creating performance reports, I strategize the ad campaign for future success.”

PeopleFinderFree’s Eden Cheng adds a human element to this initial research process. “My recent process of forecasting Google PPC potential includes checking with team members to perceive any obscure troughs and peaks. I have chosen to be conservative with the developed figures, like UPOD [under-promising and over-delivering],” Cheng explains.

Cheng continues, “Also, I have used similar uplifts, which can be seen in previous years unless I became confident. At the same time, I have cross-checked the final forecast against the previous year’s figures to make sure [there are] no high plunges in performance and built up the strategy of forecasting, actualizing, and re-forecasting, if required.”

In other words, Cheng checks performance metrics from previous years to make sure the forecast looks realistic. Then, Cheng creates a forecasting strategy alongside the research plan.

Additionally, Code Signing Store’s Rameez Usmani recommends establishing “a foundation for future calculations.” Usmani says, “This foundation should correspond to the advertising campaign’s objectives for the potential advertiser.”

Usmani suggests aligning your forecasting strategy with the number of clients you need to get your intended income, your sales team’s closure rate, your website conversion rate and cost per click.

2. Adjust for Your Bidding Behavior

No PPC forecast is one-size-fits-all — you need to adjust different variables to account for your bidding style.

“We use the Google Ads forecast tool, among others, for a variety of purposes, the main one being to help us determine how our keywords will perform in optimal settings,” TurboFinance’s Josh Stomel tells us.

Stomel explores multiple variables when forecasting keywords. “For example, viewing charts of our estimated overall performance, delving into projections for individual keywords, and then seeing how these estimates change when we adjust our maximum cost per click are all part of our current process for optimizing our advertising potential,” Stomel says. “Depending on the time of year, we also leverage the forecast date range to see how specific time frames might affect our Google PPC potential.”

Consider what conditions you prefer to bid under, and adjust your forecasts accordingly. You want your projected situation to match your real bidding situation as much as possible.

According to Google Ads Help, you can change the default bid for your Keyword Planner forecast at the top of the “Plan overview” page. Try different numbers to see how your typical bids compare.

3. Think of It as a Projection Instead of a Forecast

The term “forecasting” can be a little misleading in terms of PPC predictions. Every forecast is a best guess, meaning that many factors can change the results.

“We like to call it projections, rather than forecasts,” says growth360’s Sasha Matviienko. “This term highlights that at the end of the day, we are making a data-driven guess with lots of factors outside of our control (the 2020 lesson).”

So, what can you do to make the best guess possible? “When projecting for a year/quarter we primarily look at factors like cost per click and quality scores. This way, we are able to tell a better story and consider multiple scenarios – with cost per click of X and quality score of Y we should be getting a result Z,” Matviienko explains.

Matviienko has one final piece of advice if you use in-house algorithms to forecast your keywords: “Models that you use are important as well. The ARIMA model tends to give us the closest results as it accounts for past performance as a time progression.”

Never consider your forecast set in stone, and remember that multiple scenarios can happen to your keywords.

4. Mix Up Your Forecasting Tools

Many respondents mentioned using a mix of tools in their forecasting workflow. Considering that different platforms have unique features, data and algorithms, it’s a great idea to get more than one perspective.

At Futurety, Lulia Poe changes tools depending on the forecasting stage, starting with Google’s platforms: “Forecasting PPC campaign performance for Google usually starts with a few Google Trends dives, in order to better understand the evolution of search interest over time. Once we understand the trends, we build out predictions using volume data from Keyword Planner.”

Once the campaign starts running, Poe keeps switching up tools. “Performance Planner is a great tool to optimize budgets and bids after the campaigns have been running for a while, especially those in highly competitive & volatile markets. We account for competition using the Impression Share metric suite, coupled with Auction Insights and Semrush, which come together to form a comprehensive view of who we’re up against.”

StableWP’s Djordje Milicevic also uses Keyword Planner in early forecasting stages. “We typically start by plugging in a website (our clients’ website as well as competitors’ sites) and coming up with target keywords. Once we identify keywords with high potential, we use the built-in forecasting tool to get a better estimate of the average CPC and how much traffic (and conversions) we can expect based on various budget levels.”

Milicevic then exports Keyword Planner’s data to adjust for better accuracy. “Based on our experience, Keyword Planner sometimes underestimates the traffic as well as search volume, especially when there’s little to no campaign history. That’s why the next step is to export the keyword data into a spreadsheet and, using our proprietary forecast modeling tools, get a final estimation of the traffic we can expect, as well as the conversions and the CPA (and ROAS). Finally, we connect the sheets to a Google Data Studio report to visualize the performance and share it with stakeholders,” Milicevic concludes.

CocoSign’s Caroline Lee runs historical data through multiple Google tools. “Firstly, we use historical data to measure previous performance. Then we use trends to identify the talents trends and hot keywords. Google Keyword Planner also provides aid in the process,” Lee begins.

“Then we use Google Auction Insights to check our competitors and their performance. This helps us determine the Budget for each keyword and overall ads for the month,” concludes Lee. Since all of Google’s keyword tools are free, Lee’s method doesn’t cost any extra money.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways to go about your keyword forecasting. Running your forecasts through multiple tools can help you account for multiple scenarios and get more accurate predictions. Try different combinations until you find a workflow that delivers more accurate forecasts.

Editor’s tip: See how multiple Google keyword tools can work together with the Google Ads Campaign Engagement Dashboard Template for Databox. It pulls engagement data from Google Ads and Analytics to help you discover which keywords give you the best results.

5. Account for Future Growth

As you adjust your Google Ads forecasting plans according to market growth, don’t forget that your campaign will evolve over time. Your keyword forecasts should align with your campaign’s future growth.

Jordan Brannon from Coalition Technologies considers a client campaign’s future growth whether it starts with historical data or a fresh setup.

When running an account with historical data, Brannon factors optimization and future growth into every calculation. “We may add a percentage of improvement to important lead generation or ecommerce metrics based on our optimization scope (e.g., reducing irrelevant cost, increasing sales/leads/revenue, etc.)… Then, we set a percentage growth assumption for month-on-month or quarter-on-quarter projections,” Brannon says.

“For new accounts, we consider the average cost per click (CPC) of the top 10 keywords, take the industry average conversion rate, and derive a cost per acquisition (CPA). For ecommerce clients, we use average order values for revenue projections,” Brannon continues. “…Similar to what we do for accounts with historical data, we set a percentage growth assumption for month-on-month or quarter-on-quarter projections.”

When you’re creating your initial projections for your campaign, you need to play the long game. You can adjust your forecasts and bids in the future, but a strong forecast that accounts for future changes will save you work in the long run.

6. Start With a Budget or Reverse-Engineer It

As you forecast your Google Ads keywords, you might wonder how to adjust your budget alongside your predictions.

At VisualFizz, Marissa Ryan starts with a budget or builds a budget from goals and forecasts. “There are two ways that we forecast at VisualFizz, and we approach them with two starting questions,” says Ryan.

“First, if you have a budget in place, we ask ourselves ‘What can we get for this budget’? We take a look at the Costs-per-Click (CPCs) for the keywords we want to target and forecast how much traffic we can ‘afford’ with our budget. We usually forecast an expected Click-Through-Rate (CTR) (use industry average if you don’t have one),” Ryan begins.

Continuing on the topic of that first question, Ryan continues, “We can then forecast the number of expected conversions by applying an expected Conversion Rate to the incoming traffic. You can see how this gives us a forecast of the number of visitors and number of conversions we might be able to ‘afford’.”

So, what’s the second question? “The other question to ask is relevant when you have Performance Metrics/Goals to hit but aren’t sure how much budget it will take to meet those goals. Here, the question is ‘How much does it cost to ‘buy’ the results I want?’ To answer this question, we take a similar forecasting approach. We analyze the CPCs for the keywords we want to target, and we determine how many clicks we can reasonably expect from our budget at these CPCs. From there, we forecast the expected conversion rate of those clicks, and we are left with similar forecasted metrics: the number of expected clicks, CTRs, CPCs, and CR for the incoming traffic,” Ryan explains.

Related: 10 Tips for Executing a Cost-Effective Google Ads Bidding Strategy

For Ryan, a campaign’s budget is virtually inseparable from its forecasts. “When forecasting PPC traffic, budget is a critical component. If you know your budget, you can forecast expected traffic/conversions at that spend amount, if you don’t know your budget, you can forecast the expected spend it will take to achieve your goals,” Ryan concludes.

The post Google Ads Forecasting: How to Improve Your ROAS With Accurate Projections appeared first on Databox.

So, how do you ensure everyone who comes across the report understands it? And more importantly, how do you present data in a way that makes it useful to your client or manager?

In this article, we’ll clear any confusion you might have about web analytics reports by covering the following:

• What is Web Analytics?
• What is a Web Analytics Report?
• What are the Most Commonly Used Web Analytics Metrics?
• How to Create a Web Analytics Report?
• Free Web Analytics Templates

What Is Web Analytics?

Web analytics is the data of your website.

It is a communication map that presents you with pain points that you might not have been aware you had. Web analytics lets you see what’s going well, as well as what’s going poorly, for your business and product. In short, web analytics gives you access to the world around your website.

One thing you should note is that, with web analytics, you can’t just use the numbers presented to try and optimize certain metrics – you have to understand how they work together.

If you are an online marketer or a business owner, you are probably facing a lot of challenges on how to track your web traffic effectively. It’s no secret that Google Analytics is the most popular platform for tracking your website visitors’ actions and behaviors, but there are also other options that you can include in your analytics strategy like data from Mixpanel or Adobe Analytics. Regardless of the tool you choose, you should know that website analytics tools are among the 3 most frequently used for performance monitoring and reporting, as proven by recent research by Databox.

What Is a Web Analytics Report?

A Web Analytics Report is a file containing a snapshot of data from your web domain. This data can be used to make informed decisions for your business. These reports tell you who is coming to your site and why, which in turn helps you better reach out to potential customers or convert existing ones into paying customers.

In other words, a Web Analytics Report is the lifeblood of any website.

These reports are basically documents that contain information about the online presence of a business. They can be broad or specific, but they all have one thing in common: they are extremely helpful sets of information.

However, the interpretation of a web analytics report is not as straightforward as one may assume. This is why many marketers avoid analyzing their website data and instead focus on the more ‘creative’ aspects of marketing such as content marketing or social media.

The image below shows one example of a Web Analytics Report from Google Analytics.

What Are the Most Commonly Used Web Analytics Metrics?

With numerous web analytics metrics available to track, it is easy to get lost in endless analysis and consequently spend more time looking at reports than taking an action.

So, what are some of the most important web analytics metrics?

Here are the top metrics marketers often track:

• Website Visitors – The number of visitors you get on your website. You can get visits either from new or returning visitors. New visitors or unique visitors, are the number of people that visited your website within a specific time period. Returning visitors are anyone that have previously been on your website and returned.

• Conversion rate – This is the percentage of people who have fulfilled a specific goal on your website like signing up for your product or newsletter, filling up a form, adding a product to cart etc. The specific action depends on the type of your website and business. Analyzing conversions, for example, along with your traffic, can show you the quality of your leads.

• Exit rate – This is the number of people who viewed multiple pages of your website and then decided to leave, or exited on a certain page. Exit rate can show you what aspects of your website needs optimization. Similar to bounce rate, a high exit rate on certain pages isn’t necessarily bad. Therefore, make sure you analyze this metric along with other relevant data.

• Bounce rate – This is the percentage of people who enter your website and immediately leave without taking any further action. Most marketers try to keep their bounce rates low, howveer, a high bounce rate doesn’t necessarily need to be a bad thing. Since it all depends on the type of the page visited, make sure you analyze this metric along with other metrics.

• Traffic sources – If you want to find out where is your audience specifically coming from, this metric is a must for your Web Analytics Report. There are three different types of traffic to focus on — referral traffic, direct traffic and social traffic.

• Device usage – This measurement reports the percentage of users who access your website through different devices.

• Average Session duration – This measure takes into account events as well as the average time a user spent on your website.

• Pageviews – This metric show how your website visitors view your pages and the number of pages an individual visits on your site before exiting. This metric, like most web analytics metrics, has to be analyzed along with other data ot get a full understanding.

Note: When analyzing your website, it’s quite easy to get caught up in some vanity metrics like bounce rate, time on site, and page views. These metrics can also provide you with a lot of valuable insights, but only when they are paired with other metrics.

PRO TIP: How to track these 10 popular Google Analytics 4 metrics

Sure, there are dozens (and dozens?) more Google Analytics 4 metrics you could track. But, starting with these 10 commonly tracked metrics will give you a pretty high-level view of how your marketing is working…

1. Sessions: The number of sessions can tell you how many times people are returning to your website. Obviously, the higher the better.
2. Sessions by organic keyword: Which organic keywords bring in the most traffic to your website? This may help you determine whether your SEO investments are paying off.
3. Bounce rate: Do visitors leave shortly after landing on your website? Or do they stick around?
4. Average session duration: How much time are people spending on your website? Users with a high average session duration are most likely relevant to your company.
5. Goal completions: How many users responded to your call to action?

If you want to track these in Google Analytics, you might find the visualizations limiting. It’s also a bit time-consuming to combine all the metrics you need in one view.

To better understand how your website performs in terms of traffic growth and conversions, we’ve made this plug-and-play dashboard that contains all the essential metrics for understanding how successful you are at optimizing different aspects of your website.

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Google Analytics account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

Try this template

Now, when we understand the most important metrics we can proceed with creating a Web Analytics Report.

How to Create a Web Analytics Report?

A good report is like a good story. And, a bad report is, well, like a boring story. Of course, not all stories are interesting. But a good report, the same as a good story, does 3 things:

• It sets the reader up to be interested.
• It handles the reader’s questions and doubts.
• It presents information in a way that will interest the reader.

If you want to write a good report, here are some of the things to consider:

• What are the key business concerns? – Determine your objectives.
• Create the report outline. – A good outline is like a road map of your story.
• Define the source of the data. – Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics or something else?
• Present the big picture. – But focus on the details.
• Choose a reliable software support. – Speed up the process of creating your report.
• Connect the data source and software dashboard. – Visualize the data.
• Customize reports with desirable design. – Build the story frame.
• Launch the premiere – Present it to your team or client.

Related: Business Report: What is it & How to Write a Great One? (With Examples)

Free Web Analytics Report Templates

Who doesn’t like free stuff, huh?

We created 100+ Web Analytics Dashboards that track web analytics metrics from some of the most popular analytics tools like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Adobe Analytics, and more. In case you can’t find your favorite tool among our custom dashboard software lists of integrations, pull any data into Databox via integrations with Zapier, Integromat,  Google Sheets, or an SQL database.

With these dashboards, marketing and SEO teams will be able to easily track the performance of their website and make better, data-driven business decisions.

• Google Analytics Website Engagement Dashboard Template
• Google Analytics Landing Page SEO Dashboard Template
• Google Analytics (Ecommerce overview) Dashboard Template
• Google Analytics Traffic Growth Dashboard Template
• Google Ads PPC Performance Dashboard Template
• Google Analytics Social Media Dashboard Template
• Google Analytics Email Marketing Dashboard Template

Google Analytics Website Engagement Dashboard

Here is a simple Google Analytics Website Engagement Dashboard Template that provides you with an overview of the general performance of your website. It’s a good starting point for deeper analysis, and it is based on Google Analytics website traffic and conversion data.

Google Analytics Landing Page SEO Dashboard

Are you worried about your SEO performance? Well, the Google Analytics Landing Page SEO Dashboard Template will alleviate your worries. This template will help you track your organic traffic effectively and spot trends in a timely manner.

Google Analytics Ecommerce Dashboard

If you want to analyze an eCommerce business, a good starting point is to compare the number of transactions made each week or month to the previous time period. That way you can see how sales have been trending. With the Google Analytics (Ecommerce overview) Dashboard Template you have all transactions and revenue information as well as other important eCommerce metrics, at a single display. How cool is that?

Google Analytics Traffic Growth Dashboard

Do you want deeper insights into your website traffic? No problem. We created this Google Analytics Traffic Growth Dashboard that shows your most important traffic sources and metrics like bounce rate and sessions by device category, device branding, social network, geolocation, and more.

Google Ads PPC Performance Dashboard

If you run paid campaigns, you can get a lot of value from tracking performance data. But how do you make sense of it? Everything is easier with this Google Ads PPC Performance Dashboard, which provides a ton of valuable information on your ad groups’ performance and keyword performance.

Google Analytics Social Media Dashboard

This Google Analytics Social Media Dashboard Template will give you a clear picture of your social media performance at a glance. Get real-time data on your traffic by social media channel, goal conversions, bounce rate, and much more.

Google Analytics Email Marketing Dashboard

A short, simple, actionable email report like this Google Analytics Email Marketing Dashboard can help you track your email campaigns in one place. Download this dashboard template to visualize email metrics like signups by campaign type, date, and device.

Present Crucial Web Analytics Data to Your Clients or Key Stakeholders Using Databox Web Analytics Reports

As you saw, web analytics reports aren’t scary. They can actually be pretty easy to set up and when you know what you’re looking for, also incredibly valuable and actionable.

Would you like to take your analytics reports to the next level?

Enters Databox.

Use Databox to monitor all user activity on your website in one place and you reach your business goals faster. Connect your dashboard to visualize data from the most popular website analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Mixpanel, and curate a custom dashboard to share with your marketing team.

Sign up for Databox now and generate your own high-value website analytics reports in just a few clicks.

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