If you manage paid media for clients or stakeholders, you have probably spent a Friday afternoon copying numbers from Google Ads into a slide deck that nobody reads. Most PPC reports are treated like a chore to be gotten through, not a product to be designed. The result is predictable: bloated decks, vanity metrics, a summary written at 5pm with all the narrative of a grocery list.
A good PPC report template is short, honest, and opinionated. It tells the reader three things: what happened, why it happened, and what you are doing next. Everything else is noise. In our experience managing paid campaigns across Google, Meta, and LinkedIn, the teams that report best are not the ones with the fanciest dashboards. They are the ones who have decided, explicitly, what belongs in the report and what does not.
This guide gives you a PPC report template you can copy, plus an opinionated list of what to cut. It is built around one idea: a report should respect the reader's time and still tell the full story. If it fails either test, it is the wrong report.
Why most PPC reports fail
Reporting is one of the biggest time sinks in performance marketing. The weekly reporting ritual eats hours that should be going to strategy, creative, and optimization. Worse, most of that time gets spent on work that does not help anyone decide anything.
There are four common failure patterns. If your current report suffers from one of them, the template further down will feel like relief.
The data dump
Every metric the platform exposes gets pasted into the deck. No hierarchy, no narrative. The reader is left to figure out what matters. Most never do.
The celebration report
Only good news gets highlighted. CPA went up 30 percent but the chart starts three months ago so the line looks flat. Trust erodes fast when the reader notices.
The late report
The report arrives on the 18th of the month, covering the month before. By then the data is stale and any decision it suggests is already overtaken by events.
The AI-generated summary
A templated paragraph that describes the numbers without interpreting them. "Spend was higher this week while conversions decreased slightly." Thanks. Noted.
The underlying issue
Reports fail when they are treated as a deliverable instead of a conversation. Nobody opens a 40-page PDF with the same attention they would give a two-paragraph Slack update that starts with "here is what you need to know this week". Design the report like the second one.
The PPC report template
Here is the structure we recommend. It works for a single Google Ads account or a multi-channel setup across Google, Meta, LinkedIn, and Microsoft. It fits on one or two pages. Adjust the sections to the reader, not the other way around.
1. Headline summary (3 to 5 sentences)
The TL;DR. What happened, whether it is good or bad, and what you are doing about it. If the reader only reads this section, they should still understand the state of the account. Example: "We spent EUR 12,400 of the 13,000 monthly budget, 3 percent under pacing. CPA rose from 38 to 47 because a branded competitor launched a promo. We cut spend on two non-branded campaigns and are testing new headlines. Next check-in Friday."
2. The scorecard
A six-row table with period over period comparison. Spend, conversions, cost per conversion, revenue or pipeline, ROAS, and budget pacing. Color-code only the numbers that moved meaningfully (say, more than 10 percent). Every row has an absolute number and a percentage change. No more, no less.
3. What changed and why
The story. Three to five bullet points, each naming a specific cause. "CPA on the brand campaign dropped 18 percent after we paused the overlap with Performance Max." If you do not know the cause yet, say so. "CTR is down 12 percent across Meta. Investigating. Likely creative fatigue." Uncertainty is fine. Fake confidence is not.
4. Next actions
A short list of concrete moves. Owner and date included. "Launch new creative set on Meta by Tuesday (Maxim)." "Review search term report and add negatives (agency, Wednesday)." This is the section stakeholders scan first, so write it like you mean it.
5. Open questions or decisions needed
Optional but powerful. Make the report a place where decisions happen. "Do we want to extend the Q2 budget by 15 percent if CPA stays under target?" Forces a conversation instead of another slide.
What the scorecard actually looks like
Keep the scorecard tight. Here is the shape of it. Your numbers will differ, obviously, but the structure should not.
| Metric | This period | Previous | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spend | EUR 12,400 | EUR 11,900 | +4% |
| Conversions | 264 | 312 | -15% |
| CPA | EUR 47 | EUR 38 | +24% |
| Revenue | EUR 48,200 | EUR 52,100 | -7% |
| ROAS | 3.89 | 4.38 | -11% |
| Pacing | 95% of target | 101% of target | Under |
The scorecard above answers the first two questions any stakeholder has: are we on budget, and are the numbers moving in the right direction. Everything else in the report explains that table.
What to cut from your PPC report
Cutting is harder than adding. Every stakeholder once asked for a metric and nobody wants to be the person who removed it. But a report crowded with everything is a report that communicates nothing. Here is what almost always belongs on the cutting floor.
- closeImpression share without context. A number that tells you nothing on its own. Only useful when paired with the specific question "are we being held back by budget or bid". If that question is not on the table this week, do not include the metric.
- closeAverage position. Deprecated by Google Ads years ago. If it still appears in your deck, you are pasting from an old template.
- closeRaw click counts. Clicks without conversion context is vanity data. Include CTR only if it moved meaningfully and you have a hypothesis for why.
- closePlatform-specific vanity metrics. Video views, Meta page engagements, LinkedIn follower growth. These rarely drive decisions in a performance report. If your channel mix actually optimizes for them, that belongs in a brand report, not a PPC report.
- closeScreenshots of the platform UI. A fuzzy screenshot of the Google Ads dashboard proves nothing and adds clutter. If the data matters, extract it. If it does not, leave it out.
- closeExhaustive audience and device breakdowns. Worth checking internally. Rarely worth putting in front of a stakeholder unless something unusual is happening.
A useful test
Before including any chart or number, ask this: if the reader saw only this number, would they be able to decide something? If yes, keep it. If no, cut it. The test is annoyingly strict. It also works.
- checkCPA by campaign. Drives reallocation decisions. Keep.
- checkPacing versus budget. Drives spend adjustments. Keep.
- checkTop-performing ad creative. Drives creative decisions. Keep, but only one or two examples.
Automate the boring parts, keep the judgment human
There is a temptation, especially with modern AI tools, to automate the entire report. Do not. Automating the data layer is excellent. Automating the narrative is where reports become the generic, ignorable documents we already have too many of.
A sensible split:
- arrow_forwardAutomate: data pulls from Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, Microsoft Ads. Period over period math. Pacing calculations. Anomaly flags. Charts and the scorecard table.
- arrow_forwardKeep human: the summary. The "what changed and why" section. The next actions. The open questions. These are where the value of having a performance marketer on the account actually shows up.
In our own workflow, the budget and pacing numbers get pulled automatically into a budget tracking layer that updates throughout the day. The scorecard is generated from that. The commentary is written fresh, each time, by the person running the account. It takes 10 to 15 minutes instead of two hours. The client reads it. That is the whole game.
If you are building your own stack, the minimum setup looks like this: a data source that reliably pulls daily spend and conversions across channels, a template that renders the scorecard and pacing chart, and a lightweight doc or email where you add the written summary. That is it. Everything beyond that is preference, not necessity.
Pull the data once a day
Automate a single daily pull from every active channel. If a source fails, you know by the next morning, not on the day of the report.
Render the scorecard automatically
Spend, conversions, CPA, revenue, ROAS, pacing. With period over period comparison baked in. No hand copying from the platform UI.
Write the commentary yourself
Ten to fifteen minutes. Three bullet points on what changed and why. Three bullet points on next steps. Send.
Weekly or monthly? Probably both.
The cadence question trips up a lot of teams. In practice, active PPC accounts need both a weekly and a monthly rhythm, and they serve different purposes.
| Dimension | Weekly report | Monthly report |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Pacing, anomalies, next actions | Trend analysis, strategy check |
| Length | Half a page, 5 minute read | 1 to 2 pages, 10 minute read |
| Comparison | Week over week | Month over month plus year over year |
| Delivery | Email or Slack | Doc or deck, sometimes presented live |
| Owner | Account manager | Account manager plus strategy lead |
The weekly version is short by design. It is the heartbeat. The monthly version is where you zoom out, look at the three-month trend, and have the harder conversations about strategy and budget allocation.
Daily reports are almost always a mistake outside of launch windows or active incidents. They train stakeholders to look at noise. If you find yourself sending daily updates to soothe anxiety, the underlying problem is probably a trust or alignment issue, not a reporting issue.
Frequently asked questions
Spend less time reporting. Spend more time on the craft.
aubado handles the admin so performance marketers can focus on the work that matters. Budget pacing, Google Ads performance, multi-channel visibility. Check once a day. Stay in control. Then close the tab.
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