Create and manage reports

Reports help you view, organise and analyse your data. Reports allow you to place large amounts of data into multi-dimensional tables, charts and customisable dashboards so you can visualise meaningful patterns and trends.

In this article, you’ll learn how to create and save reports, how to open your saved reports and how to schedule reports to be emailed to you and others who have access to your account.

On this page

• Open a predefined report
• Create a report
• View hierarchical tables and charts

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Open a predefined report

To save you time, Google Ads comes with 'predefined reports', a set of ready-made reports to answer specific questions about your data. You can use predefined reports as a starting point for a new saved report that you can edit, schedule and share.

To open a predefined report:

1. Go to Report editor within the Campaigns menu .
2. Under 'Predefined reports (dimensions)', select and open the report that you'd like to see. To find the full list of predefined reports, select View all.

Note: As a manager account (MCC) user, you can manage campaigns more efficiently by creating, editing, saving and applying reports to specific child accounts or across all campaigns. You can also create and view reports anywhere along the path of a manager account to a child account level, and specify where you’d like your reports to be saved.

You can add or remove columns from a predefined report. To be able to view a predefined report that you’ve customised at a later time, select Save to save the report.

Predefined reports for manager accounts

If you have a Google Ads manager account, any predefined report that you open includes the following additional columns: “Account” and the “Customer ID” associated with the account.

You’ll also find an additional predefined report, the 'Account' report, in manager accounts. This report contains information from your 'Account' page.

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Create a report

If you want to fully customise the data that appears in a report, you can create a report from scratch. Unlike a predefined report, when you create a standard report, you’ll need to use the Report Editor tool to choose which columns, rows and values to include in the report and in which type of table or chart they’re presented. Learn how to create reports in the report editor.

Manage your reports

The 'Insights and reports' page allows you easy access to your saved reports. Your reports are visible to everyone with access to your account. You have the option to view all reports, or only those reports that you created. Any of these reports can be edited, saved, scheduled and shared.

Saved reports that you haven’t accessed in over 18 months are automatically removed from your account. You can access a report by opening or downloading it, or by opening a dashboard that has the report.

Open a saved report

1. Go to Report editor within the Campaigns menu .
2. All saved reports are listed by default. To view the reports that you created, click the 3-dot icon in the area under 'Reports', then select Show your reports only.
3. Find the report that you want to view, then select the title to open it.

Note: For now, reports that you’ve saved while downloading them from pages other than the report editor won’t function the same way as the reports that you’ve created in the report editor. Some of these reports will open on the page from which they were downloaded, while others will be available for download only.

Schedule report emails

You can send a one-time email of your reports or schedule reports to be emailed to you and other people who have access to your account at specific intervals.

Note: Reports for individual accounts begin running at 3.00 a.m. in your designated time zone. Reports for accounts without a designated time zone begin running at 3.00 a.m. Pacific Time.

1. Go to Report editor within the Campaigns menu .
2. Find and open the report that you want to view, and then click the email and schedule icon .
3. Complete the following settings:
   1. Select one or more account users to send the report to.
   2. Choose the frequency (examples: daily, weekly) that the reports are sent and in what format (examples: CSV, XML).
4. Select Save.
5. To edit a saved schedule, complete the following steps:
   1. Select the email and schedule icon .
   2. Select the pencil icon and change the settings.
   3. Select Save.

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View hierarchical tables and charts

You can view the hierarchical data by using tree tables and chart drilldowns in Google Ads report editor. There’s no restrictions on the number of rows and columns. Downloaded reports for a hierarchical table would be the same as that of a flat table.

Create hierarchical tables

1. Go to Report editor within the Campaigns menu .
2. Select Custom and select Tree table.
3. Add details by dragging and dropping elements into the row section (for example, you can add 'Campaign', 'Ad group', 'Search Keyword', 'Search keyword match type' and 'Keyword max CPC').
4. Add metrics like 'Clicks' and 'Impr.' (impressions) to the column section.
5. You can select Save or Add to the dashboard.

For hierarchical tables (tree tables) and hierarchical charts (chart drilldown), you would have to drag and drop the chips onto the selection panel to create the hierarchy.

In Google Ads, Account > Campaign > Ad group is a hierarchical structure that holds good for most of the campaigns, except for Performance Max where the hierarchy is Account > Campaign > Asset groups.

• If you add 'Campaign' in a hierarchical table or chart, you can drill down on the table or the chart to view 'Ad group' automatically, instead of adding them to the selection panel.
• Similarly in a manager account, you can add 'Account' to turn on a default drilldown to 'Campaign' and to 'Ad group' subsequently.
• This default behaviour is only turned on if there is no user-specified hierarchy in the selection panel.
• You can select any campaign to drill down. For example, if you're looking at a bar chart, you can select the bar associated with the campaign to drill down.
• You can select any ad group to further filter down to a specific ad group, and view the campaign’s previous condition.
• Bear in mind that drilldown state won't be persisted in a saved report.

Chart drilldowns are similar to hierarchical tables in a way that you can create similar drilldown behaviour on charts. The chart types that support hierarchy include bar, column and pie charts. There's no limit on dimensions to be added to these chart types. Chart pagination reports can span multiple pages since pagination is now offered in charts.

Related links

• Create custom reports in report editor
• Create and edit dashboards
• What to track based on your advertising goals