Troubleshooting performance fluctuations and changes in App campaigns

In this article, we’ll outline different reasons for App campaign fluctuations and changes, why they may lead to changes in campaign performance over time, and how you can use the tools in your Google Ads account to understand what’s driving these changes.

Bear in mind: It’s normal for your campaign performance to vary.

Before you begin

Use Explanations to identify reasons for performance changes in a single click

Explanations give you insights into large changes in your App Campaign’s performance and help you quickly find out why they happened. By default, you’ll have explanations that compare the date range that you selected with the previous period of the same length:

Go to your 'Campaigns' or 'Ad groups' page.
Hover over values in your data table that are coloured in blue with a dotted line.
You’ll see how this value has changed since the last period.
Click View explanation to find what caused the change.

Your Google Ads account

Assess performance based on your bid strategy and optimisation goal

Before drawing conclusions about your campaign performance, it’s important to first consider whether the settings you are using match the metrics that your campaign is optimising towards. If not, it may be worth setting up a new campaign if you’d like to start optimising for a different goal. A new campaign will be better at optimising your bids and ads for an audience who can meet each goal. This will help to ensure that you are focusing on the relevant metrics when analysing campaign performance and understanding what drove fluctuations in Google Ads.

For example, target CPA helps you get as many conversions as possible at or below the target cost-per-action (CPA) you set. In campaigns using target CPA, cost-per-conversion and other conversion-related metrics may be better indicators of performance than cost-per-click and impressions.

10 common reasons why your performance is fluctuating

1. Recent changes to account or campaign settings

Editing any account or campaign settings, such as bid strategy, bid adjustments, bids, budget, keywords, audiences, demographics or ad scheduling, can change your performance.

Learn more in 'App campaign performance fluctuations: Changes to account or campaign settings'.

2. Conversion tracking setup and conversion delay

If there’s a sudden drop in global pings for a conversion that your App campaign is optimising for, this can result in a drop in serving and spending as Google Ads optimises towards your set conversion action.

Learn more in 'App campaign performance fluctuations: Conversion tracking setup and conversion delay'.

3. Bids and bid targets

Your performance may fluctuate if your bids, bid limits or bid targets are set without taking into consideration the historical data that Google Ads will use to serve your ads.

Learn more in 'App campaign performance fluctuations: Bids and bid targets'.

4. Budget settings

Your campaign may be more likely to have performance fluctuations when its budget is limited.

Learn more in 'App campaign performance fluctuations: Budget settings'.

5. Low creative coverage and diversity

If you’re running an App campaign, it’s important to ensure that you have a diverse set of creatives across ad formats.

Learn more in 'App campaign performance fluctuations: Low creative coverage and diversity'.

6. Targeting settings and overlaps

If your campaign is targeting a smaller group of users with very specific audience, location or language settings, it may also be more likely to have performance fluctuations. You may have multiple campaigns or ad groups in your account that are eligible to enter overlapping auctions due to similar targeting.

Learn more in 'App campaign performance fluctuations: Targeting'.