Explanations are designed to showcase significant changes to the performance metrics that your campaign is optimising towards. However, you may find that explanations are not always available. Here are a few common reasons for the unavailability of explanations:
- Metric is not aligned to campaign goals: Explanations will only trigger for the performance metrics that your campaign is optimising towards because fluctuations in other metrics are expected but not indicative of campaign success or performance issues. An example would be explanations for changes in click volume or conversion value on a campaign using the Maximise conversions bid strategy because its success is measured based on conversions and cost.
- Change is not significant enough to trigger an explanation: Explanations will not trigger for smaller changes in either percentage terms or absolute numbers (for example, a low number of total conversions). This is to ensure that we’re only highlighting significant changes since these smaller variations in performance are expected.
- Date range includes today or goes further back than the last 90 days: Explanations are only available for periods within the last 90 days. You can still view the percentage change for more than 90 days, but the explanations window won’t show. Similarly, you won’t see explanations if your date range contains today’s date because there may be more data for the day.
- Campaign type and bid strategy availability: Explanations are currently only available for some campaign types and bid strategies.
Goal-aligned metrics and campaign types that support explanations
| Campaign type | Bid strategy | Supported metrics |
| Search | Enhanced CPC for value | Conversion value |
| Search | Manual CPC and Enhanced CPC | Clicks, cost, impressions, conversions and conversion value |
| Search | Maximise clicks | Clicks and cost |
| Search | Maximise conversions | Cost and conversions |
| Search | Maximise conversion value and Target ROAS | Cost and conversion value |
| Search | Target CPA | Cost and conversions |
| Search | Target impression share | Cost and impressions |
| App | Target CPA | Cost, installs and in-app actions |
| Performance Max | Maximise conversions (with an optional target CPA) | Cost, conversions |
| Performance Max | Maximise conversion value (with an optional target ROAS) | Cost, conversion value |
