PPC Reporting: Understanding the Metrics That Actually Matter

Your PPC reports are full of numbers: impressions, clicks, CTR, CPC, conversions, conversion rate, ROAS, CPA. For business owners who are not PPC specialists, these reports can feel overwhelming and the numbers meaningless. But understanding the right metrics is critical because they tell you whether your advertising is making money or burning it. Here are the metrics that actually matter and what they should tell you about your campaign's health.

Conversions: The Only Metric That Pays Bills

A conversion is when a visitor takes the action you want: submitting an enquiry form, calling your business, making a purchase, or booking an appointment. This is the single most important metric because it directly connects your ad spend to business results. If your campaigns generate thousands of clicks but zero conversions, you are losing money regardless of how impressive the other metrics look.

Ensure conversion tracking is properly set up before evaluating any campaign. Without it, you are guessing about effectiveness. Common conversion actions to track include form submissions, phone calls from ads, purchases, email sign-ups, and WhatsApp message clicks.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

CPA tells you how much you spend in advertising to acquire one converted lead or customer. Calculate it by dividing your total ad spend by the number of conversions. If you spent KES 50,000 and generated 25 enquiries, your CPA is KES 2,000 per enquiry.

The critical question is whether your CPA is profitable. If the average customer generated from those enquiries is worth KES 100,000 to your business, spending KES 2,000 to acquire them is exceptionally good. If your average customer value is only KES 3,000, that CPA is probably too high unless your retention rate is very high.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

ROAS measures the revenue generated for every shilling spent on advertising. If you spend KES 100,000 on ads and generate KES 500,000 in revenue from those ads, your ROAS is 5:1 or 500 percent. For service businesses where attributing exact revenue to specific ads is harder, ROAS may need to be estimated based on average customer value and close rates.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR is the percentage of people who see your ad and click it. While CTR does not directly equal business results, it is an important diagnostic metric. A low CTR means your ads are not resonating with your audience, which wastes impressions and lowers your Quality Score, increasing your costs. Aim for CTR above 3 percent for search ads and above 0.5 percent for display ads as general benchmarks.

Quality Score

Quality Score directly affects what you pay per click and where your ads appear. A keyword with a Quality Score of 8 will cost significantly less per click and receive better positioning than the same keyword with a Quality Score of 5. Monitor Quality Scores for your most important keywords and prioritise improvements to any scoring below 6.

Impression Share

Impression share tells you the percentage of available impressions your ads captured. If your impression share is 40 percent, your ads showed for only 40 percent of eligible searches. The rest went to competitors or were missed due to budget constraints or low ad rank. Understanding why you are losing impression share, whether from budget or rank, tells you what to fix.

What to Ask Your PPC Manager

If an agency manages your paid advertising, these are the questions to ask in your reports: How many conversions did we generate this month? What was our cost per acquisition? How does this compare to last month and last year? Which campaigns and keywords are driving the most conversions? What percentage of our budget is being spent on converting versus non-converting keywords? And what changes are you making based on this data?

Any PPC manager who cannot answer these questions clearly is not managing your money effectively. At Cyril Creatives, our PPC reporting focuses on the metrics that matter to your business. Contact us to see how data-driven advertising management can improve your results.