Know Exactly Where Every Dollar Goes —and What It Returns.
Most PPC agencies send a PDF full of clicks and impressions and call it a month. We report on what actually matters — how much you spent, how many leads it generated, what each lead cost, and what’s being done to improve those numbers next month.
What Most PPC Agencies Report — and Why It Doesn’t Help You
Most monthly PPC reports are designed to look impressive rather than be useful. Here’s what we see most often — and why none of it tells you whether your campaigns are actually working.
01
Impressions and Clicks as Success Metrics
High impression counts and click volume are easy numbers to show. They don’t tell you whether a single one of those clicks became a lead, a call, or a customer. Without conversion data, clicks are just spend.
02
No Cost-Per-Lead Visibility
If your report shows total spend and total conversions but not cost-per-lead, you can’t evaluate whether the campaign is profitable. CPL is the number that determines whether PPC makes business sense at your current budget.
03
No Comparison to Prior Periods
A snapshot without context is meaningless. A report that shows this month’s numbers but nothing to compare them against doesn’t tell you if things are improving, declining, or flat. Trends are what matter.
04
No Explanation of What Changed
Data without narrative leaves clients guessing. If CPL went up this month, you need to know why — and what’s being done about it. A number on a page with no context is not a report; it’s a spreadsheet export.
05
Phone Calls Not Attributed
For most local service businesses, phone calls are the primary conversion — not form fills. An agency that doesn’t track call attribution is showing you half the conversion picture at best, and drawing conclusions from incomplete data.
06
No Forward-Looking Action Items
A report should end with a plan. What tests are running next month? What’s being optimized based on this month’s data? Without action items, reporting is backward-looking documentation — not active campaign management.
The Metrics That Actually Tell You If PPC Is Working
Every Firestarter report is organized around the metrics that connect ad spend to business outcomes — not the vanity numbers that look good but don’t mean anything.
Budget & Spend Metrics
Where your money went, how efficiently it was deployed, and whether the budget paced correctly through the month — broken down by campaign so you can see exactly where every dollar was allocated.
- Total ad spend vs. budget
- Spend by campaign and ad group
- Budget pacing and daily spend rate
- Cost-per-click by campaign and keyword
- Impression share and lost impression share by budget
Conversion Metrics
The numbers that connect ad spend to actual business outcomes — form submissions, phone calls, and the cost of acquiring each one. These are the metrics your campaign success lives or dies on.
- Total conversions (forms + calls combined)
- Cost per lead by campaign and ad group
- Conversion rate by campaign and landing page
- Call tracking: call volume, duration, and attribution
- ROAS for e-commerce campaigns
Quality & Relevance Metrics
The behind-the-scenes health indicators that determine how efficiently your budget is working. Low Quality Scores cost you more per click — tracking these metrics keeps campaigns competitive.
- Quality Score by keyword and ad group
- Click-through rate vs. industry benchmark
- Ad relevance and landing page experience scores
- Search impression share and competitive position
- Negative keyword additions and search term coverage
Month-Over-Month Performance
Every metric in context — compared to the prior month and tracked over the life of the campaign. Trend lines tell a clearer story than snapshots, and they show when optimizations are working.
- CPL trend over the campaign lifetime
- Conversion volume month-over-month comparison
- CPC trend and Quality Score improvement over time
- Budget utilization history
- Test results: ad variants, landing page tests, bid adjustments
Everything in a Firestarter PPC Report
Every monthly report includes the same complete picture — no tier-based reporting where full data costs extra, and no summary-only views that hide what’s actually happening in the account.
- Executive summary: key numbers and what changed this month
- Total spend, budget pacing, and cost-per-click breakdown
- Conversion report: forms, calls, and total leads by campaign
- Cost per lead by campaign and ad group
- Month-over-month comparison across all primary metrics
- Top-performing keywords and search terms that drove conversions
- Negative keyword additions made during the month
- Ad copy performance: click-through rates and conversion rates by variant
- Quality Score trends by ad group and keyword
- Landing page conversion rate and recommendations
- Optimizations completed and tests running next month
- Access to live dashboard for real-time data between reports
How Reporting and Optimization Work Together
Reporting isn’t a standalone deliverable — it’s the output of an ongoing optimization cycle. Every report drives the next round of improvements.
Weekly Account Management
Search term reports reviewed weekly, negative keywords added as new irrelevant queries appear, bid adjustments made based on performance data, and ad variants monitored. The monthly report reflects this ongoing work — it doesn’t replace it.
Report Delivery
Full monthly report delivered within the first week of the new month — covering spend, conversions, CPL, Quality Score trends, top keywords, negative keyword additions, and a plain-language summary of what the numbers mean and why they moved.
Review Call
A scheduled review call to walk through the report, answer questions, and discuss priorities for the next month. No black box — you understand what’s happening in your account and why every decision is being made.
Optimize & Repeat
Action items from the review call are implemented, tests identified in the prior month are launched, and the cycle continues. Each month’s report builds on the last — campaigns improve compoundingly over time rather than running at a static baseline.
Common PPC Reporting Questions Answered
Yes. Every client gets access to a live reporting dashboard that pulls real-time data from Google Ads and Google Analytics. You can check spend, clicks, and conversions any time without waiting for the monthly report. The monthly report adds the analysis layer — the narrative, the comparisons, and the action plan — that the raw dashboard data doesn’t include on its own.
We use dynamic number insertion (DNI) — a tracking phone number that dynamically swaps on your landing page based on the source of the visit. When a visitor arrives from a Google Ads click, they see a unique tracking number. When they call it, the call is attributed back to the specific campaign, ad group, and keyword that drove it. This closes the attribution loop for phone-heavy businesses where form-only tracking drastically undercounts actual leads.
Conversion tracking accuracy is verified before your campaigns ever go live, and we audit it periodically as part of ongoing management. We use Google Tag Manager, GA4 DebugView, and Google Ads conversion diagnostics to confirm every event is firing correctly. If something breaks — a site update changes a form, for example — we catch it quickly and fix it before it skews your data or your campaign’s bid strategy.
Yes — for e-commerce clients with Google Merchant Center and purchase tracking set up, every report includes ROAS (return on ad spend) by campaign, product category, and where applicable, by individual product. We also track transaction volume, average order value, and revenue attributed to each campaign so you can see the direct dollar return on your ad investment.
Every metric in the report is shown alongside the prior month’s number and a percentage change — so you immediately see direction, not just a static snapshot. For campaigns with longer histories, we also include trailing trend charts so you can see whether the improvement trend is sustained or whether a good month was an outlier. We want you to be able to hold us accountable to consistent progress over time, not just a single good month.
Find Out What Your
Current Reports Are Missing.
Share your last PPC report with us and we’ll show you what’s missing, what the numbers actually mean, and what a properly structured report should look like for your campaigns.