A monthly ads report built on clicks, impressions and spend tells a client what the budget bought, not what it earned. If the client owns the ad account, they can already see those numbers. Lead with four others: cost per conversion, cost per customer, lead-to-customer rate and return on ad spend.
Clicks still help you diagnose a campaign. They just don't answer the question a client actually asks after a few months: how many customers did we get, and what did each one cost?
A report the client could already see
On a mentoring call, a freelancer one year into running a small Google Ads agency asked how to report to clients. Their report was a Google Sheet of impressions, clicks and daily spend, downloaded from Google Ads. One client, a home appliance brand, ran Search campaigns to a landing page with a WhatsApp button. They tracked those button clicks as conversions in Google Ads, but sales came back by hand: the client told them every two weeks how many deals had closed.
As we pointed out, the client could already see those numbers in Google Ads. When a client owns the account, anyone it gives read-only access or above can view the campaigns and run performance reports. So the sheet repeated what the client could open for itself, and it said nothing about sales.
Four numbers, worked through
We built the report on the call with round numbers in the client's currency. They're illustrative, not results.
- Cost per conversion. 3,000 spend brought 20 WhatsApp chats, so 150 per chat. Google's Cost / conv. column is the same idea: total cost divided by conversions. It works here because a click on the button counts as a conversion, which Google lets you set up with the tag's Click option.
- Cost per customer. If 5 of those chats bought, 3,000 divided by 5 is 600 per customer. This one needs the client's sales data.
- Lead-to-customer rate. 5 customers from 20 chats is 25%.
- Return on ad spend. Assume an average customer is worth 2,000. Five customers bring in 10,000, and 10,000 divided by 3,000 is 3.33x. In Google Ads the matching column is Conv. value / cost, but only once real sale values are in the account.
Use the ratios to plan
The same four numbers turn a client's target into a budget. If the client wants 50 customers in a month and 25% of chats buy, that's 200 chats. At 150 a chat, the budget is about 30,000. Then report the trend: same spend, more chats and more customers each month means the ads are working.
Getting customers into the data is the hard part. A sales count every two weeks in a sheet is a start. Better is importing sales into Google Ads as offline conversions. For anyone not yet importing, Google now recommends enhanced conversions for leads, which matches hashed customer data such as email addresses. We cover the setup in offline conversion import.
At a SaaS company one of us worked at, the people reviewing the ads each week or month looked at one number: cost per customer. When it was high, the campaign closed. When it was good, it got more money.
The takeaways
- Clicks, impressions and spend show what the budget bought, and the account owner can already see them.
- Lead the report with cost per conversion, cost per customer, lead-to-customer rate and ROAS.
- Track the action that starts a sale, such as a chat button click, as a Google Ads conversion.
- Use the ratios to turn a customer target into a budget, then report the trend month over month.
- Bring sales back into the account with offline conversion imports so cost per customer is measured, not estimated.
Common questions
What should a monthly Google Ads report include?
We lead with four numbers: cost per conversion, cost per customer, lead-to-customer rate and return on ad spend. Clicks, impressions and spend can sit underneath as supporting data, but they don't show whether the ads brought in business.
How do I calculate cost per customer from ads?
Divide the ad spend for the period by the number of customers who came from it. In our worked example, 3,000 spend that produced 5 customers is a cost per customer of 600. You need the client's sales data, or imported offline conversions, to know the customer count.
How does Google Ads calculate cost per conversion?
Google's Cost / conv. column divides total cost by the number in the Conversions column. It only counts eligible interactions, so clicks that can't be tracked for conversions are left out of the calculation.
Can Google Ads count a WhatsApp or chat button click as a conversion?
Yes. Google lets you track clicks on a button or link on your website as a conversion action by choosing the Click option when you set up the tag, so each tracked click counts in your conversion columns.
How do I get sales that happen offline back into Google Ads?
With offline conversion imports. Google now recommends enhanced conversions for leads, an upgraded version that matches hashed customer data such as email addresses, for anyone not already importing. Once sales are in the account, cost per customer can be reported there instead of in a spreadsheet.