Now that we’ve covered some of the reporting basics, let’s discuss some useful reports and things to look for in those reports to help point out trends and find areas for account growth.
Ad performance report
CTR - The ad performance report is a valuable report to run on a regular basis because it can help you to point out which ads are not performing. Having underperforming ads in your account can pull down the quality and CTR of your campaigns and cause them to cost more. So, if we run an ad performance report we can then filter the report by CTR to determine which ads are not performing the way we would like. Using a 3-4% CTR is a good start for determining the effectiveness of an ad. If you run the report and find that you have multiple ads that have CTRs below 1 or 2% then you should take a look at these ads to see if you can delete them and write an ad that will be more effective.
Keyword performance report
Average position – The keyword performance report is helpful because it can help you spot keywords that are not in a competitive position. I would run this report for the previous month or the current month (if there have been enough days) and sort it by average position. If you have keywords that are falling below position 5, this is an area for improvement. You can start by either increasing your bids overall or adjust for individual match types. In order to adjust for match types you would want to set up the report to have the match type value as one of the columns. You can set this up under section 2, "advanced settings" and click on "add or remove columns". In general, a higher bid on exact match type for generic terms and a higher bid on broad match type for long-tail terms is recommended.
Age and gender targeting
The age and gender targeting report is most helpful if you have a medium- to large-sized account. This report will show you which age groups and genders are making up the majority of your impressions and clicks. Keep in mind that this data is gained from searchers who are logged into their Live account when they search so there isn't data available on every searcher, but if your account is large enough, there can be some good insights gained from this report. One recommendation is to look at trends in this report. If you notice that women between the ages of 25-34 are performing the best for your campaigns or specific ad groups, then it would be a good idea to implement incremental bidding on those campaigns/ad groups to boost your bids on that particular demographic. This can help you to fall in a higher position when someone in this demographic searches on one of your keywords.
I hope you’ve picked up a tip or two by reading these posts. Good luck with your reporting endeavors! If you have questions or comments about this post, or other reporting questions, let us know on the adCenter Forum. You can also watch the adCenter Reports Flash tutorial.