TL;DR: A monthly PPC report should cover 12 specific line items, not just a dashboard screenshot. Agencies that pair numbers with a written narrative see far lower client churn: 97% of agencies call transparent reporting critical to retention. This guide lists exactly what to demand, plus red flags a report is hiding a problem.
Why Most Monthly PPC Reports Don’t Show What You’re Paying For
iClick Advertising manages more than $61 million in Google Ads spend across clients that range from touring musicians’ merchandise stores to law firms and SaaS companies. Almost every prospective client hands us their current agency’s monthly report before they hand us anything else.
The pattern repeats across most of them. A screenshot of impressions and clicks. A chart that trends upward. No explanation of what changed or why. That is a slide, not a report.
Reporting quality is not cosmetic. It is one of the biggest levers an agency has over whether a client stays or leaves. AgencyAnalytics surveyed 494 agency professionals between February and April 2026 for its 2026 Marketing Agency Benchmarks Report. It found that 97% of agencies now rate accurate reporting as important or extremely important for client retention. Seventy-six percent call it extremely important, up from 70% a year earlier.
Only 10% of agencies attribute client churn directly to attribution or ROI clarity issues. That number hides the real problem. 42% of churn gets filed under “budget cuts,” and budget cuts are an easy call to make when a client already cannot tell what their spend is doing.
This guide lists the 12 things a monthly PPC report should include, in the order a reader would look for them, plus what to do if your current agency’s report does not measure up.
What Separates a Real PPC Report From a Dashboard Screenshot
Before the full checklist, here is the fast version. A written report should read like a briefing, not a query.
| Report Element | What a Real Report Shows | What a Red-Flag Report Shows |
|---|---|---|
| Search terms | Full list of queries that triggered ads, plus new negatives added that month | “Performance is up,” with no query-level detail |
| Conversion tracking | Verified event-by-event breakdown, re-tested monthly | Assumed to be working, never re-checked |
| Budget pacing | Spend versus plan, broken out by campaign | One total spend number for the account |
| Impression share | Share lost to budget and share lost to rank, listed separately | Not mentioned |
| Narrative | A written explanation of what changed, why, and what happens next | An auto-generated dashboard export with no commentary |
If your last three reports looked like the right-hand column, the rest of this guide tells you what to ask for instead. Our 23-question framework for vetting a PPC agency covers reporting practices in more depth if you are actively comparing vendors.
How to Know If Your Numbers Are Actually Good
A report only means something if you know what to compare it to. WordStream’s 2026 Google Ads Benchmarks report was published June 16, 2026. It is based on 13,474 U.S. search campaigns across 23 industries. The overall average click-through rate is 6.64%. Average cost per click is $5.42. Average conversion rate is 8.18%, and average cost per lead is $66.69.
Those are blended averages across every industry, from arts and entertainment to attorneys, and the spread is wide. Legal services average $9.87 per click, while arts and entertainment averages $1.63. A report that shows your numbers without industry context is only half a report. Ask your agency to show your account’s trend line next to the benchmark for your specific category, not the blended average.
The 12 Things a Monthly PPC Report Should Include
1. Account-Level Performance Against Goal, Not Just Last Month
Your report should open with spend, conversions, cost per conversion, and return on ad spend, compared against your stated goal for the month, not just against the previous month. A month-over-month comparison alone hides seasonal swings and makes any number look fine if last month was also bad. A good report shows three data points side by side: this month, last month, and the target.
2. Campaign-by-Campaign Breakdown by Intent
A single blended number hides which campaigns work. Performance should break out by campaign type: Search, Performance Max, Shopping, and Display each behave differently and deserve separate rows. A law firm running Search for “personal injury attorney” and Performance Max for brand awareness should never see those two blended into one cost-per-lead number.
3. Search Term Report and Negatives Added
This is the item most agencies skip, and it is worth demanding first. The search term report shows the exact queries that triggered your ads that month, and the report should list which new negative keywords got added as a result. In new client accounts, iClick’s audit team consistently finds a portion of ad spend going to irrelevant search queries before cleanup. Most agencies do not send this report by default. Ask for it every month, not only at audit time.
4. Conversion Tracking Verification
Numbers only matter if the tracking behind them is accurate. Your report should confirm which conversion actions are being counted, whether Enhanced Conversions are active, and when tracking was last tested against actual sales or leads. Google’s own documentation on attribution reporting notes that these reports show the full path a customer takes across keywords and campaigns before converting. That detail belongs in a monthly report, not buried in a settings menu.
5. Budget Pacing and Spend Allocation
The report should show planned spend versus actual spend, by campaign, with an explanation for any campaign that under-spent or over-spent by more than 10%. An account that consistently underspends its budget is leaving conversions on the table. An account that overspends without explanation is a red flag on its own.
6. Quality Score and Ad Relevance Trends
Quality Score does not need to headline the report, but its trend should appear somewhere. A keyword sitting at a Quality Score of 3 or 4 for three months running is a keyword the agency has not touched. Flag it, explain why, and show what changed.
7. Ad Creative Test Results
If the agency is running responsive search ads, the report should name which headlines and descriptions are earning the “Best” label in Google’s asset performance view, and what got swapped out that month. A report that never mentions ad copy testing usually means no one is running any.
8. Auction Insights and Impression Share Lost
Impression share tells you how much of the available auction you are winning, and it should split into two numbers: share lost to budget and share lost to rank. Losing to budget means you could spend more profitably. Losing to rank means your bids or Quality Score need work. A report that shows one blended impression share number is hiding which problem you actually have.
9. Attribution Model and How Conversions Were Counted
Your report should state which attribution model is active, data-driven, last-click, or another, and flag any month where that model changed. Google Ads Help warns that switching attribution models mid-flight can make performance look better or worse without any real change in results. A report needs to call out the switch, not let the chart speak for itself.
10. Landing Page and Post-Click Performance
Clicks are not conversions. The report should show bounce rate or landing page conversion rate for the pages ads point to, especially after any landing page change. A campaign with rising CTR and falling conversion rate usually points to a landing page problem, not an ads problem.
11. A Written Narrative: What Changed and Why
This is the item that correlates most directly with retention. Agencies that pair automated numbers with a plain-language explanation of what changed and why keep clients longer than agencies that just export a dashboard. A narrative section does not need to be long. Three or four sentences that say what moved, what caused it, and what happens next is enough.
12. Next Month’s Plan and Specific Actions
The report should end with a short, specific list: which campaigns get new budget, which keywords get paused, which ad tests launch next. “We will keep optimizing” is not a plan. “We are testing two new RSA variants on the top three converting ad groups” is.
How Often You Should Get a PPC Report, and in What Format
Monthly is the baseline, not the ceiling. AgencyAnalytics’ 2026 survey found clients split across three main formats: 35% prefer 1:1 meetings or calls, another 35% prefer static reports like PDFs or slide decks, and 27% prefer live dashboard access. Neither format alone replaces the other. A live dashboard lets you check numbers anytime. A written monthly report or a call is what surfaces the reasoning behind them.
For accounts spending more than $10,000 a month, a brief weekly check-in on spend pacing, layered on top of the full monthly report, catches problems before they eat a quarter’s budget. For smaller accounts, monthly is usually enough, provided the report includes all 12 items above.
Red Flags That Mean Your Report Is Hiding a Problem
- The report changed format or vendor recently, with no explanation for the switch.
- Search term data is available on request but never included by default.
- The same three metrics appear every month with no comparison to a stated goal.
- Conversion numbers do not match what shows up in your own CRM or GA4 account.
- No one can tell you, in one sentence, what changed since last month and why.
If two or more of these apply, the report is not the problem. What it is hiding is.
How to Use This When You’re Evaluating a New Agency
If you are comparing agencies rather than fixing a relationship with your current one, use this checklist as a scoring sheet during the sales process. Ask each agency to show a sample report, not describe one. Our guide to hiring a PPC agency and our PPC agency buyer’s checklist turn this reporting checklist and 23 vetting questions into a single document you can bring to a sales call.
Reporting quality often tracks with how an agency prices its services. Our breakdown of what PPC agencies actually charge in 2026 covers the trade-offs between flat-fee, percentage-of-spend, and performance-based pricing, including how each structure tends to shape what gets reported and what gets left out. If you want to see where a specific agency’s fee structure lands relative to others, the agency fee comparison calculator is a faster way to check than requesting five separate proposals.
If Your Current Reports Don’t Measure Up
A monthly report is a symptom, not the disease. If yours is missing half the items on this list, the account behind it is probably missing the same things: unchecked search terms, untested ad copy, and conversion tracking no one has verified in months.
Our free written PPC audit checks all 12 of these items against your actual account data, not just your agency’s summary of it. You get a written report back, in the same format described here, showing exactly what is and is not being tracked. For a deeper structural review beyond reporting, our 47-point Google Ads audit checklist covers account architecture, bidding, and structure in full.
Book a call to walk through your current reports with us, or start with the free audit and see the gaps in writing first.
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Frequently asked questions
What should a PPC report include at a minimum?
At minimum, a PPC report should show spend, conversions, cost per conversion, and return on ad spend measured against a stated goal, not just last month’s numbers. It should also include the search term report and any negative keywords added that month. Without search term data, you cannot tell whether spend went toward relevant clicks or wasted ones.
How often should I receive a PPC report?
Monthly is the standard baseline for most accounts. Agencies managing more than $10,000 a month in spend often add a brief weekly pacing check-in on top of the full monthly report. Real-time dashboard access is a useful supplement, but it should never replace a written monthly report that explains what changed and why.
What’s the difference between a PPC report and a PPC audit?
A PPC report covers monthly performance: what happened, why, and what’s next. A PPC audit is a deeper, point-in-time review of the entire account, covering structure, bidding, tracking, and history, usually going back 6 to 12 months. Our own audit checks 47 points; a monthly report should track roughly a quarter of those every month.
Should my agency give me raw dashboard access instead of a written report?
Dashboard access is useful, but it is not a substitute for a written report. Dashboards show what happened; they do not explain why or what your agency plans to do about it. Ask for both: live access for checking numbers anytime, plus a monthly written narrative that connects the numbers to a decision.
What if my agency refuses to share the search term report?
Refusing to share search term data is a red flag, not a policy. The search term report shows exactly which queries triggered your ads, and it belongs to your account, not the agency managing it. If an agency will not provide it on request, ask why in writing, and consider getting a second opinion through a free audit.
