How to create and share custom reports in Google Analytics
If you use the local tracking methods of the Advanced Ads Tracking add-on, it is pretty simple to share impressions and clicks of your ads with advertisers as long as you choose one of the two local methods.
You can either give them a link to the non-indexed public statistics or create an automatic email report. But how to manage those reports if you track your ads with Google Analytics instead of the local methods?
This tutorial describes how to create custom reports in Google Analytics and share these ad statistics with your customers.
Create custom Google Analytics reports for your ads
Contents
To record and manage the statistics of your ads in Google Analytics, you need to choose the method “track using Google Analytics” in the tracking settings of Advanced Ads (Advanced Ads > Settings > Tracking).
When you save this setting, you will see a new field to insert your Google Analytics tracking ID.
Afterward, you will find the clicks and impressions of your ads in the event section of your Google Analytics dashboard.
Open Google Analytics and create a new custom report
Open your Google Analytics dashboard and navigate to Customisation > Custom Reports > New Custom Report.
If you have any problems finding the custom reports, please look at this Google Analytics tutorial.
Add metrics and dimensions to your report
After clicking on New Custom Report, you can edit a blank one. At first, you should title your report and give it a descriptive name.
Then, you need to add several dimensions (Event Action, Event Label) and metrics (Unique Events, Total Events) to your report.
It is crucial to add those metrics in the proper sequence. Have a look at the following screenshot and follow my example if you are not sure about this.
How to create a custom report in Google Analytics
Add filters to show the results of specific ads
Without any filters, your custom report will contain the impressions and clicks of all your ads.
That can be useful for your ad management. But if you share this report with one of your customers, you probably don’t want to show your complete statistics, but just those which belong to the customer’s ads.
You can use the optional filters of Google Analytics to choose individual data sets for your custom report.
If you want to show only statistics for some specific ads, you need to filter the Event Labels. You can combine different filters to exclude or include results.
Once the custom report is created, you can share it with your ad manager, advertisers, or clients.
You can export the custom report as a PDF, CSV, or XLSX file. Or you ship this data to Google Spreadsheets.
Of course, you can also automate an email report (PDF, CSV, XLSX) and send it to your customers in a chosen frequency (once, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly).
Joachim started marketing his first local news website in 2009. Shortly after, he successfully monetized his travel blogs about Morocco. He is an expert in affiliate marketing in the tourism and travel industry. When he’s not writing tutorials for Advanced Ads or supporting other users, he prefers staying in Marrakech or at the Baltic Sea.
