7. Viewing AdSense’s New Performance Reports
In This Chapter
• Understanding AdSense Performance Reports
• Examining Individual Performance Reports
• Saving, Viewing, and Scheduling Custom Reports
You want to generate the most revenue from the ads you allow on your website, blog, or other content. To do that, you need to know how your current ads are performing—and why.
To that end, AdSense offers a variety of performance reports to help you track and analyze ad performance in a number of different ways. Smart webmasters use these reports not just to determine how much ad revenue they’re generating, but also to increase the amount of that revenue. That requires reading between the lines in these reports, analyzing why your current ads are performing as they are, and then fine-tuning your site so that you generate more click-throughs per ad.
Understanding AdSense Performance Reports
You access all available AdSense reports from the new Performance Reports tab. If you’re familiar with the previous version of AdSense, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with some of the new reports offered—as well as the ability to schedule these reports on a repeating basis.
Viewing by Date
Most AdSense reports, by default, display a week’s worth of data—the past seven days, to be exact. However, you can click the date button at the top right of any report page and opt to view activity for
• Today
• Yesterday
• Last 7 days (default)
• Last 30 days
• This month
• Last month
You also can set a custom date range for any report. When you click the date button you see the date pane, shown in Figure 7.1. Just enter start and end dates, and then click the Apply button.
Figure 7.1. Viewing data for a specific time period.
You also can compare data from one date range with another. When you click the data button, check the Compare to Other Dates box then enter a second set of custom dates. When you click the Apply button, AdSense displays two sets of data on the same chart, as shown in Figure 7.2.
Figure 7.2. Comparing data for two time periods.
View your data in any of these ways, and you’ll be able to drill down one level using the View drop-down above the table. For example, to see which advertisers are placement targeting your homepage, you could view data by URL channels, then drill down by targeting type.
Customizing the Graph
All performance report pages display a visual graph of the data at the top and a detailed data table at the bottom. By default, all graphs display the estimated earnings for that period across the specified number of days. You can, however, display other data points on the graph. All you have to do is check the metric in the legend next to the graph; you can display multiple metrics at the same time, with each data type displaying as a different color line, as shown in Figure 7.3.
Figure 7.3. Displaying multiple metrics on a graph.
Viewing Key Events
By default, all graphs display data, as you might expect. However, you can add key events to any graph so you can see how various activities affect your ad revenue.
To add events to a graph, click the Events button at the top right of the graph. Events are now pinpointed by date on the graph (as A, B, C, and so on), with detail for each event in a new table beneath the graph. Figure 7.4 shows what this looks like.
To remove events from the graph, click the Data button.
Figure 7.4. Viewing events on a graph.
Changing Column Focus
The data displayed in a performance report depends on the column focus you select. Each column focus lets you look at your data in a particular way.
You can change from the following options by clicking the Columns button at the top-right corner of the chart:
• Page views. This default view displays the following data columns: Page Views, Clicks, Page CTR, CPC, Page RPM, and Estimated Earnings.
• Ad requests. Displays the following data columns: Ad Requests, Coverage, Clicks, Ad Request CTR, CPC, Ad Request RPM, and Estimated Earnings.
• Matched requests. Displays the following data columns: Ad Requests, Matched Requests, Clicks, Matched CTR, CPC, Matched RPM, and Estimated Earnings.
• Individual ad impressions. Displays the following data columns: Ad Impressions, Clicks, Ad CTR, CPC, Ad RPM, and Estimated Earnings.
We discuss all of these metrics in more detail in the “Understanding Key Metrics” section, later in this chapter.
Adding Dimensions
Whatever performance report you choose, and whatever column focus you select, you can perform more detailed analysis by adding one or more new dimensions to the report. This essentially adds a new column to the data table and subdivides the existing data among the new dimension.
To add a new dimension to any report, click the Add Dimension button under the graph and make a selection. This adds a new button to the left of the Add Dimension button; to remove this dimension, click the X on that dimension’s button.
Viewing and Sorting the Data Table
Within the data table itself you see a number of columns for different types of data, matched to rows that correspond to the report type. For example, the Entire Account by Day report, shown in Figure 7.5, has rows for each day in the selected time period; the Products report has rows for each of the AdSense products you’re using; and the Ad Types report has rows for each type of ad appearing on your site (Text, Image, Rich Media, and so on).
Figure 7.5. Viewing a data table.
By default, the data table is sorted by the first column. To sort by another column, click that column title; to sort in reverse order, click the column title twice.
To combine two or more rows into a single row, check those rows and click the Combine button. This displays a new report with only the data for those selected rows. To just view a graph (not a full report) for one or more data rows, check those rows and click the Chart button.
At the bottom of the data table is one row for Averages, which averages the value of selected columns. The final row is the Totals row, which totals the data in all columns.
Understanding Key Metrics
Now, about the data that AdSense collects, analyzes, and displays for you. You might know what clicks and income are, but what is CPC, Page RPM, and some of those other metrics?
To help you better analyze your AdSense performance, here’s a quick reference to the key metrics you’ll find in AdSense’s performance reports:
• Ad CTR. The ad click-through-rate calculates the number of clicks divided by the number of ad impressions.
• Ad impressions. This metric measures each time an ad is displayed on your website. Note that this measures individual ads, not ad units; an ad unit can contain multiple ads, and thus register multiple impressions when displayed.
• Ad request CTR. The ad request click-through rate calculates the total number of clicks divided by the number of ad requests.
• Ad request RPM. This is another metric that measures things in terms of thousands of impressions. It is calculated by dividing estimated earnings by the number of ad requests.
• Ad requests. This metric counts the number of times ads have been requested from your site. If you have multiple ads on a page, you will register more ad requests than page views. Ad requests are counted even when no appropriate ads are found or served for a page.
• Ad RPM. Another thousands-of-impressions measurement. This one is calculated by dividing estimated earnings by the number of ad impressions.
• Clicks. The actual number of clicks that the ads on your pages receive. Each click represents a source of revenue.
• Coverage. Put simply, the percentage of ad requests that returned at least one ad. Remember, AdSense can’t always find relevant ads for all sites; the coverage is likely to be some percentage of the total number of ad requests. It’s calculated by dividing the number of ad requests that returned ads by the total number of ad requests.
• CPC, or cost per click. The average price paid for each click on a given ad.
• Estimated earnings. This final column on all reports details the actual money you’ve earned for the selected period.
• Matched CTR. This is the click-through rate for matched ad requests, calculated by dividing the number of clicks by the number of matched requests.
• Matched requests. A matched request occurs when AdSense is able to return an ad for an ad request.
• Matched RPM. This measures matched request revenue per one thousand impressions. It’s calculated by dividing estimated earnings by the number of matched requests.
• Page CTR, or the click-through-rate (CTR) per page. This measures the number of ad clicks divided by the number of views per page—in other words, what percentage of people who visit your pages click on the AdSense ads. Naturally, the higher the CTR the better, as it means that more of your visitors are clicking on the ads—and generating revenue for you.
• Page RPM, or the effective cost-per-thousand views per page. This represents your estimated earnings for every 1,000 views you receive; it doesn’t represent what you’ve actually earned. This metric is derived by dividing your total estimated earnings by total page views.
• Page views. The number of times the pages on which AdSense ads appear have been viewed. This doesn’t measure anything about the ads on your pages, just the number of visitors your pages receive.
Page RPM (formally known as effective CPM, or eCPM) is useful for estimating future revenue if you increase (or decrease) the amount of traffic to your pages. For example, if your page RPM is $1.50 and you currently have 1,000 visitors to your site, you’re earning $1.50 in income. But if your page RPM stays the same and you increase site traffic to 10,000 visitors, you’ll earn $15; increase traffic to 100,000 visitors and you’ll earn $150.
What’s the most important information in this overview? The earnings number is important, of course, because that’s the amount of money the ads on your site have generated for the given period. But I also find valuable the various click-through rate (CTR) metrics because they tell you just how effective each ad is; it describes the percent of visitors who click on the ads. A low CTR indicates that the ads just aren’t working—possibly because they’re not as targeted or relevant as they should be. This is a sign that you might need to tighten the focus of your pages, to help AdSense better target the ads it serves.
Viewing Quick Reports
Before we get into all the myriad reports that AdSense offers, let’s take a quick look at something called quick reports. These built-in reports show basic ad performance on a day-to-day basis for specific periods. You can then customize, to some degree, these quick reports to display more specified information.
Let’s start with the quick reports themselves. You can access these reports on the Performance Reports tab by going to the Saved Reports section of the navigation pane and clicking the Quick Reports button. Quick reports are also accessible from the Overview page of the Home tab.
The following quick reports are available:
• Overview, this month
• Overview, last month
• Custom channels, today
• Custom channels, yesterday
• Custom channels, this month
• Custom channels, last month
Click a link to display that specific report. Use the various tools discussed previously to customize the report, if you like.
Examining Individual Performance Reports
Quick reports aside, we now come to AdSense’s huge variety of performance reports. Google captures a lot of data when it serves ads to your site, and there are lots of ways to slice and dice that information.
All these reports are accessible from the Performance Reports tab. Just click the report name in the navigation pane to display it.
Entire Account by Day, Week, and Month
These are actually three separate reports: Entire Account by Day, Entire Account by Week, and Entire Account by Month. The first displays data for each day in the reporting period (each day has its own row in the data table). The second displays data for each week in the reporting period. The third displays data for each month in the reporting period. (Figure 7.6 shows the Entire Account by Week report, for a 30-day reporting period.)
Figure 7.6. The Entire Account by Week report.
For most accounts, these are the most viewed performance reports because they provide all the basic information you need. The data table displays page views, clicks, page CTR, CPC, page RPM, and estimated earnings—enough to let you know how your site’s ads are performing.
Products
The Products report tracks ad performance by type of AdSense product: AdSense for Content, for Feeds, for Mobile, and so forth. Each product has its own row in the data table.
To view multiple AdSense products on the Product graph, check each product row in the data table and click the Chart button.
Custom Channels
Use the Custom Channels report to track the performance of any custom ad channels you’ve created. Each channel has its own row in the data table.
URL Channels
Performance data for all the URL channels you manage are displayed in the URL Channels report. Each URL channel you track has its own row in the data table.
Sites
The Sites report tracks the performance of each site on which you run AdSense ads. Each site has its own row in the data table.
Countries
If you want to see where in the world your visitors come from, check out the Countries report. This report displays data sorted by your site visitors’ countries; the most popular countries have their own rows in the data table. (Note that this report is not available when viewing performance by ad unit, ad size, or channel.)
Platforms
Not every visitor comes to your site from a personal computer. These days, smartphones and tablets are likely to be the Internet access devices of choice. To that end, use the Platforms report to track visitors by the devices they use—Desktop (computers), Tablets, High-End Mobile Devices (smartphones), and Other Devices.
Ad Units
Now we get into a slightly different type of report. The Ad Units report tracks performance by the types of ad units appearing on your site. Each ad unit has its own row in the data table.
The data table itself tracks a different set of metrics than in previous reports. The data columns here track AdSense product, ad requests, coverage, clicks, ad request CTR, CPC, ad request RPM, and estimated earnings.
Ad Sizes
The Ad Sizes report tracks performance by ad size. The data columns are the same as for the Ad Units report.
Ad Types
The Ad Types report tracks performance by type of ad—Text, Image, Rich Media, Flash, Video, Animated Image, Audio, and Link Units. The data columns are the same as for the Ad Units report.
Ad Networks
Not all ads served by AdSense come from the AdSense network. Google partners with several third-party ad networks to serve their ads to your site.
You can track performance by network via the Ad Networks report. Each ad network has its own row in the data table. The data columns are the same as for the Ad Units report.
Targeting Types
The Targeting Types report tracks performance by how the ads are targeted for your site. Three targeting types are tracked: Contextual (AdSense matches ads to your site content), Interest-based (Google serves ads based on other sites people have visited), and Placement (advertisers specifically request your site for their ads). The data columns are the same as for the Ad Units report.
Bid Types
The bid type is the way that advertisers bid in the auction for your ad space, either cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM). This report tracks the types of bids used for the ads on your site. The data columns are the same as for the Ad Units report.
Saving, Viewing, and Scheduling Custom Reports
As discussed previously, there are a lot of ways to fine-tune what is displayed in a given report. Fortunately, you can save any report you’ve customized and revisit it later.
Saving a Custom Report
To save a report you’ve customized, click the Save Report button at the top of the report page. When the Save Report dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 7.7, enter a name for this report then click the Save button.
Figure 7.7. Saving a custom report.
Viewing Saved Reports
All the reports you’ve saved are displayed on the Performance Reports page, in the Saved Reports section of the navigation pane, as shown in Figure 7.8. Click a report name to display that report.
Figure 7.8. Viewing saved reports.
Scheduling Reports
After you create a report, you can schedule that report to run on a regular basis and have the results emailed to you. All you have to do is click the Save button to save the report, give the report a name, and then check the Run This Report Automatically option.
This expands the Save Report dialog box, as shown in Figure 7.9. You can opt to run the report daily, weekly or monthly, for a variety of time periods (yesterday, last seven days, last thirty days, this month, or last month). Enter your email address into the Share With box (or enter other people’s addresses, if you want them to see the report), then click the Save button. Google will now run the report as specified and email it to you and anyone else you selected.
Figure 7.9. Scheduling a report.
Downloading Report Data
Want to further slice and dice the data in a given report? Then download it to your computer and work on it using Microsoft Excel or Access. Just go to the report you want to download, click the Export to Excel CSV button, and when the Save As dialog box appears, select a filename and location for the report file. It’s that easy.
Setting Your Default Report
Finally, you can opt to display any performance report—even a custom report—on the Overview page of your Home tab. Just navigate to and/or customize the report, then click the Set as Default Report button.