Microsoft Advertising features a range of metrics that analyze the successes of a campaign, offer insights into alterations needed to increase campaign optimization, and ultimately initiate data-driven decisions focused on scaling your Microsoft Advertising campaigns.
In our previous blog post, we compared Microsoft Ads and Google Ads for agencies. We analyzed how agencies can optimize their approach to PPC campaigns to maximize ROI on their marketing spend.
This blog will delve into the top-performing Microsoft Advertising metrics that should be included in reports and explore how to create custom reports to showcase your insights and achievements.
Overview Of The Most Important Metrics for Tracking Microsoft Ads Campaign Success
Conversions
Conversions are the completion of an action by a user after engaging with your ad. You determine what a conversion is, whether that be a purchase, completing a contact form, or a download. Conversions help to measure the success of your campaign and whether users are completing the actions you have chosen. The higher the conversion, the more likely it is that the content of your ad is resonating with your target audience and successfully driving engagement.
Cost Per Acquisition/Conversion (CPA)
The CPA is how much you are paying for each conversion/acquisition. It is calculated by the number of conversions divided by the total cost of your campaign budget. This metric indicates how effective your spending is and if you are being profitable. It is important to monitor CPA across campaigns to optimize bidding strategies and budgets. Often, if the CPA of a campaign is too high, re-evaluating keywords, bids, budgets, ad copy, and landing pages can decrease the CPA.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
CTR is a percentage that measures the number of clicks your ad has received divided by the number of times your ad was displayed. The CTR can help you monitor how effective your ad copy is as it is a good indicator of your ad’s relevance. This can help you determine whether your ad resonates with your intended audience. According to Microsoft Ads, a good CTR is around 2%, but keep in mind this can vary by industry. If you have a low CTR, consider changing your ad copy to appear more relevant to users and target audiences.
Conversion Rate
The conversion rate is shown as a percentage by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of clicks. The higher your conversion rate, the better your performance and the quality of the traffic landings across your pages. Microsoft Advertising data shows a good conversion rate can generally be between 2-3%.
Average Cost Per Click (Average CPC)
The Average CPC determines the average amount each click that interacts with an ad costs. It is calculated by taking the total cost of all clicks, divided by the number of clicks. This metric can aid understanding if you are getting a good ROI and enables insight into how much you pay for traffic. It will help you determine the quality of your traffic, and if your traffic is relevant, you can pay for a cheaper click. Please note that the Average CPC varies depending on your industry, as some keywords are more expensive than others.
Revenue
Revenue is a value that you can collect using event tracking. It can either be a constant value per conversion or a variable amount, such as your sales total. Revenue helps you track how much money you are making for each conversion. It is important to have universal event tracking for the revenue column to show data.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
The ROAS is your revenue divided by your spend. It is helpful to measure how profitable your campaign is and to help monitor whether your ad spend is bringing in the expected value.
Impression Share
Impression share is the number of times your ad was shown divided by the total available impressions your ad can get. This is shown as a percentage. Impression share determines if your ad is being shown to your intended audience and helps you compare your campaign to your competitors. You can also see how many impression shares you are losing with the columns ‘IS lost due to budget’ and ‘IS lost due to rank’. These two columns will help you determine whether you need to increase your bids, improve your keyword selections, or increase your daily budget.
How to Create Custom Microsoft Ads Reports
Microsoft Ads has several types of reports that can help you review your preferred metrics and monitor your performance. Depending on which insights and achievements you’re reporting on will impact which report category you will showcase metrics and data from. Categories include performance, ad extensions, product ads, history changes, targeting, billing and budget, labels, and dynamic search ads. Each category is also segregated into characteristics to highlight specific metrics relevant to your campaign and report.
A Step-by-Step Guide for Creating Microsoft Ads Reports with Swydo
If you haven’t done so before, connecting to your Microsoft Ads data within your Swydo account is quick and easy. First, click the “+ New Report” button.
Click on the + icon to make a new report
This will bring up the report template gallery.
The template gallery allows you to choose preset reporting templates.
You are presented with two choices: either start a report from scratch by selecting “New blank report,” or utilize a pre-existing template such as the “Microsoft Ads Reporting” template. If you find yourself unsure of what to include in your report, the latter option may prove to be of great assistance. When starting from a blank page, it can be challenging to know where to begin, so using a template can provide a foundation for you to customize the report to your specifications.
However, this guide will initiate the process with a blank page and generate a report displaying your campaign’s performance.
After selecting “New blank Report,” you must pick a client for the report – choose from an existing client or create a new one.
We then need to choose our data source, so click the “+ New data source” button to add a new data source or choose from the available list of options. You must then go through the Microsoft Ads Authentication/approval process to allow Swydo to connect to your Microsoft Ads data. Once you have done this, you will see your new data source ready to use to create your own Microsoft Ads report.
At first, you will see this blank report screen, ready for you to add your widgets and KPIs to visualize the Microsoft Ads data you are most interested in.
Press the “+” icon to choose from a range of available default widgets.
You will then need to select the data source you had connected earlier and choose from the range of widgets. Once you do – your report will automatically be populated with your data.
For example, if you choose the Conversion widget and want to report on your Conversions per month by the network – you can do it under dimensions and metrics.
This is what the heat map for this particular setting can look like.
You can also filter the values that you want to include in your report.
This was all about widgets. You can also set specific KPI blocks in your report in an easy way by changing the presentation to a KPI.
About Swydo’s Dynamic Report Template
Let’s be real, creating reports for multiple clients can be tedious. It takes up a lot of time and is pretty repetitive. But luckily, report templates are here to save the day. With templates, you can create a complete report in seconds and simultaneously use the same structure with multiple clients.
The best part? Editing the template will change all the reports linked to it, which is pretty convenient. You can also add general filter settings in KPIs and Widgets to ensure that every report created from the template has the right settings.
Creating a template is easy and can be done just like creating a report. Here are the steps to follow:
1. Head on over to “Report Templates” on the left side panel.
2. Pick a template from our library or create your own.
3. Click on the “Create Report” button.
4. Choose the client with the data source to complete the new report.
5. Decide if you want to create a report out of the template or have it linked to the template.
Using report templates can save you time and effort while ensuring consistency and accuracy in your Microsoft Ads reports.
Swydo is easy to use, scalable, and dynamic.
Would you like to see how Swydo can help you with your Microsoft Ads Reporting? It’s easy to request a demo. Or, if you want to really dive into the features, try our free trial.
About Diginius Diginius is a London-based SaaS technology company specializing in digital marketing and e-commerce solutions. As Microsoft’s Global Channel Partner of the Year 2022, they support 600+ agencies worldwide to drive and grow their performance across Microsoft Ads as part of the Diginius Partner Program.