Evaluate ad performance on the Display Network

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With the "Ads", "Assets", and "Placements" pages, you can view detailed statistics to help you evaluate the performance of your Display ads.

In this article, you’ll learn how to:

  • Find out where your Display ads are appearing
  • Analyze the audiences your campaigns reach using impressions, clicks, and conversions
  • Figure out which audiences and targeting choices are working

Tip:

Try to spend an hour or more each week analyzing the performance of your Display ads.

Basic insights

Confirm that your ads are showing

Follow the steps below to check whether your ads are running or paused.

  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon Campaigns Icon.
  2. Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu.
  3. Click Ads.
  4. From the Views bar at the top, select Display campaigns.
  5. The “Status” column will show whether your ad is showing. If your ad isn’t showing, you’ll see why not and what you can do to fix the issue.
Get a list of sites where your ads appeared

See which websites, videos, and apps have displayed your ads using the “When and where ads showed” page.

  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon Campaigns Icon.
  2. Click the Insights and reports drop down in the section menu.
  3. Click When and where ads showed.

You’ll see all placements, including automatic targeting methods such as keywords, topics, remarketing, and audiences. You’ll also see any manual placements you chose.

What to look for:

  • Placements that have performed well and where your ads could show more often with an increased bid.
  • Poor-performing placements to exclude, based on how they compare with your other placements. Sometimes it may not be immediately clear why your ads appeared on a certain placement, but comparative performance is a good gauge of whether or not a placement should be excluded.

Note: Some of the URLs that you see may be incomplete. It could be that the URL is too long or that it contains private information about the person viewing the placement, like a username or password. When this happens the URL is shortened with an ellipsis and may be partly stripped, potentially taking you to a page that’s different from where your ad was shown.

Example

An outdoor company has a Yosemite Hikes campaign. They’ve been using managed placements and want to find additional sites to target by analyzing impressions (Impr.) and conversions. By visiting the Placements page, they can analyze those metrics.

Placement Type Campaign Impr. Conversions
half-dome-hikes.com Site Yosemite Hikes 1,500 20
adventure-hikes.com Site Yosemite Hikes 1,500 25
yosemite-power-drinks.com Site Yosemite Hikes 3,000 2
hikes-for-kids.com Site Yosemite Hikes 2,000 0

In the Where ads showed page, the website half-dome-hikes.com is performing well, so the account manager adds it as a managed placement to the campaign. On the other hand, the yosemite-power-drinks.com and hikes-for-kids.com automatic placements are performing poorly. These placements are also geared toward people outside their target audience, so the account manager excludes them.

See if your ads are getting impressions and clicks

Follow the steps below to find out whether your ads have earned any impressions, clicks, and more.

  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon Campaigns Icon.
  2. Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu.
  3. Click Ads.
  4. From the Views bar at the top, select Display campaigns.

What to look for:

  • How different ad creatives compare in their performance
  • Which ad formats (image, video, text) perform better

Example

This Yosemite Hikes campaign has two different ad creatives.

Ad Campaign Clicks Conversions
Half dome ad
Half dome
Yosemite Hikes 150 20
Hiker ad
Hiker
Yosemite Hikes 150 5

The Half dome ad gets more conversions than the Hiker ad, so the account manager decides to remove the latter from this campaign.

Identify the ad targeting that's getting results
  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon Campaigns Icon.
  2. Click the Audiences, keywords, and content drop down in the section menu.
  3. From the workspace bar at the top, select Display campaigns.
  4. Select your campaign.
    • Click Search keywords for keyword performance.
    • Click Audiences for audience segment and demographics performance.
    • Click Content for topics and/or placements.

What to look for:

  • Remove targeting methods that don't perform well or that restrict your audience too much.
  • Identify the targeting methods that get your ads on the most appropriate placements and in front of your intended audience.

Example

An account manager has been using broad topics like Hiking & Camping to target ads for his Yosemite Hikes campaign. However, the placements where these ads appear based on his topic targeting aren’t as relevant as he’d like. So, he decides to use the Audiences page to reach certain customers. From the Audiences page, he selects Targeting and uses an affinity audience for “Outdoor enthusiasts” and “Thrill seekers.”

Tip:

To see how your audience targeting is performing, click Audiences in the page menu and scroll to the bottom of the performance table. You’ll see metrics based on your audience targeting. Learn more about targeting your ads by audience interests and how to add audience targeting to an ad group.

Find out which demographic groups are seeing your ads

Discover the groups you’re reaching from the Demographics page. You’ll see these stats even if you haven’t added demographic targeting.

  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon Campaigns Icon.
  2. Click the Audiences, keywords, and content drop down in the section menu.
  3. Click Audiences.
  4. From the Views bar at the top, select Display campaigns.
  5. Select your campaign and click the Age, Gender, Household income, or Parental status tab to access performance statistics.
  6. To access exclusions, click Content under the Audiences, keywords, and content drop down in the section menu and select the Topic exclusions tab.

What to look for:

  • Demographic groups with high conversions
  • Demographic groups with low cost per action (CPA)
  • Certain audiences that you want to reach with ad creative and targeting methods

Example

This Yosemite Hikes campaign advertises tours that are relevant to all age groups.

Age Campaign Clickthrough Rate
18-24 Yosemite Hikes 0.26%
25-34 Yosemite Hikes 0.20%
35-44 Yosemite Hikes 0.16%
45-54 Yosemite Hikes 0.16%
55-64 Yosemite Hikes 0.14%
Unknown Yosemite Hikes 0.15%

The account manager notices a higher clickthrough rate amongst people in the 18 - 24 age group. Since people in this age group tend to click ads in this campaign more often than other age groups, he decides to revisit the ad creative and targeting to make it appealing to other age groups.

Note:

If you exclude people in the "unknown" category you may be excluding some of your target audience.

Learn more about how to reach people of specific age and gender

Custom performance data and charts

By clicking Campaigns Campaigns Icon and then Insights and reports you’ll find new ways to see and analyze your ad performance data.

There are three main reporting tools:

Reports allows you to create various charts or tables to see performance data. You can combine dozens of custom metrics, seeing granular detail on factors such as impressions, targeting, and conversions. These reports can be saved for future reference.

Learn more about reporting tools

Predefined reports (formerly Dimensions) let you see basic performance data from a selected set of metrics, which you can further refine.

Learn more about predefined reports

Dashboards are designed to let you access your most useful data in one place. You can drag and drop saved charts and tables you made using Reports into multiple panes on the dashboard, create new charts, create Scorecards to see quick performance data, and add notes.

Learn more about dashboards

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