How to automate PPC analysis with AI

PPC analysis is the process of reviewing how your paid campaigns are performing. It means digging into key metrics like clicks, impressions, CTR, CPC, conversion rate, and quality score to see what's working and what's wasting spend. The goal is simple — understand your data well enough to make smarter, more profitable decisions.

A solid PPC analysis helps you:

• Set clear goals: Use past data and market insights to define realistic targets for spend, conversions, and ROI.
• Plan smarter campaigns: Identify the right keywords, craft better ad copy, and set bids that align with your objectives.
• Stay optimized: Continuously track performance and make adjustments before small issues turn into wasted budget.
• Prove results: Translate your findings into clear reports that show what's driving ROI and where improvements are happening.

In short, PPC analysis keeps you connected to the real story behind your numbers — helping you show value, stay efficient, and make every dollar count.

The purpose of PPC analysis is to:

• Set clear goals and objectives: By analyzing historical data and understanding the competitive landscape, you can set realistic and achievable goals for your PPC campaigns.
• Plan and execute campaigns: It can help you identify the right keywords to target, create effective ad copy, and set appropriate bids.
• Monitor and optimize campaigns: PPC analysis is essential for monitoring the performance of your campaigns and making necessary adjustments to improve results.
• Measure and report on results: It can help you track your progress toward your goals and report on the results to your stakeholders.

And how does it help? It helps you prove ROI, track progress and trends, and brief leadership or clients on the performance of your campaigns.

The way you present your PPC analysis report can impact the rest of your project.

If your clients don't understand your analysis, it can lead to more questions for everyone involved, even if you're doing a great job.

For starters, you'll need to know where to look and what to look for.

Where to look?

The ad platforms already offer a bunch of reporting tools. But if you need better insight into what's going on with your account performance, you can use a third-party tool.

What to look for?

During the analysis, look at the key metrics that are relevant to your goals. These metrics will vary depending on your specific business, but some of the most common metrics include:

• Clicks: The number of times that your ads were clicked.
• Impressions: The number of times that your ads were shown.
• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of times that your ads were shown that resulted in a click.
• Conversion rate: The percentage of clicks that resulted in a desired action, such as a sale or lead generation.
• Cost per click (CPC): The average amount you paid for each click.
• Cost per conversion (CPA): The average amount you paid for each conversion.

If you manage Google Ads, you've probably used Google Ads Editor to check performance changes. It's fine for quick edits or surface-level reviews, but it falls short when you need to dig deeper into what's actually driving those changes.

Finding the root cause of a performance shift in Google Ads often means jumping between multiple reports, filters, and views — a time-consuming process that makes it easy to miss key insights.

We reached out to a few experts and daily practitioners to learn what they do to improve their campaigns. Here's what they suggest.

Amy McClain-Ponder, Group Director - Performance Media at Beeby Clark+Meyler said you should regularly check in on your Search Partners' performance and exclude low-performing search queries. And speaking about if you should go broad, she said exact match worked wonders for them over broad and phrase match.

Related: Is It Time to Re-Evaluate Your Broad Match, Exact Match, and Smart Bidding Strategies? An Optmyzr Google Ads study

Here's more detail into her tactics.

• Exclude search queries that are low performers or are completely irrelevant to your business. While there are many search queries we can't see, we do see that Google has gotten better about matching to at least the right realm of our clients' businesses. But, we still see irrelevant keywords that are close, but still miss the mark – for example, for a homeowners insurance client, we might still see "car insurance" queries come through.
• Regularly check in on Search Partners' performance, especially if you start to see a dip in your lead quality or lower conversion rates for ecommerce. We have seen Search Partners be the culprit of low lead quality many times.
• Consolidate your campaigns. Since Google smart bidding emerged, we have found that segmenting campaigns out too strictly - whether by match type, device, or even categories can be detrimental to performance. We've done tests where we have consolidated device, match type, and similar themes into one campaign to feed the Google algorithm, and we have seen improvements in CPA and ROAS.

He also listed several other tips below:

• Make sure your conversion actions are tracking properly.
• Check budget pacing regularly.
• Know your competition and how your PPC efforts stack up with theirs. Look over the auction insights report for individual campaigns and ad groups. Focus on how these numbers change over time.
• Add "Search Lost IS (impression share) due to rank", "Search Lost IS due to budget", and "Search Impr Share" to your reports and compare how these metrics change over time. This will give you an idea of how you can make adjustments to regain impression share in competitive auctions.
• Check the Content report and look at performance for "Where Ads Showed". For display campaigns, look at all of your placements regularly and exclude anything irrelevant.
• Consider device performance and make sure your landing pages are mobile-optimized. Especially if most of your traffic is from mobile.
• Compare performance over different date ranges as much as you possibly can.
• Look at keyword quality scores. Low scores imply poor messaging in your ads and landing pages. This has implications for your CPC as well.
• Consider your business's seasonality when making changes or decisions within your account. If there is a certain time when your company tends to sell more, it might make sense to put an extra budget into that period.

After consolidating all these tips, here's a daily, weekly, and monthly PPC analysis checklist for you.

• Check Ad Spend: Review your daily budget to ensure you're not overspending. Monitor for any unexpected spikes in spending.
• Monitor CTR: Monitor your CTR daily to catch any sudden drops or spikes in click performance.
• Keep an eye on search query performance: Keep an eye on the performance of your high-value or high-cost keywords to prevent overspending or identify opportunities for bid adjustments.
• Check Ad Position: Check your ad positions to ensure they remain within your target range. Adjust bids as needed to maintain position.
• Review Search Term Report: Regularly review search term reports to identify irrelevant or costly search terms. Add negative keywords to filter out unwanted traffic.
• Review Negative Keywords: Review your negative keyword list and add any new negative keywords based on the week's search term report.
• Review Ad Extensions: Check the performance of ad extensions, such as site links and callout extensions. Optimize or pause underperforming extensions.
• Adjust bids: Make real-time bid adjustments based on performance data. Increase bids for top-performing keywords or decrease bids for low-performing ones.

• Conduct a performance review: Assess the overall weekly performance of your campaigns. Look for trends and changes that need further investigation.
• Review A/B tests: Review the results of any A/B tests you're running, such as ad copy, landing pages, or bidding strategies. Make adjustments based on your findings.
• Check Quality Score: Check Quality Scores for your keywords. Identify keywords with low scores and work on improving ad relevance and landing page quality.
• Review ad copy performance: Evaluate the performance of different ad copies and test new variations based on the data.
• Monitor competitors: Monitor competitors' ads and strategies to stay competitive. Identify new competitors or changes in ad copy.
• Monitor budget allocation: Ensure your budget is being allocated efficiently. Shift the budget to campaigns or ad groups that are performing well.
• Review geographical performance: Analyze how different regions are performing and adjust geo-targeting settings as needed.
• Review device performance: Check how your ads perform on various devices (desktop, mobile, tablet). Adjust bids and ad copy for each device based on performance.

• Conduct a comprehensive monthly performance review: Conduct a comprehensive review of your monthly performance comparing it to previous months and assessing progress toward your goals.
• Conduct ROI Analysis: Calculate the ROI for your campaigns to ensure they align with your business objectives.
• Analyze your conversion funnel: Review the customer conversion journey and identify potential areas for improvement in the funnel.
• Check your audience segments: Analyze audience data and create or refine custom audience segments for more targeted advertising.
• Review all landing pages: Evaluate the performance of your landing pages. Make any necessary improvements to enhance user experience and conversions.
• Plan budgets: Plan your budget allocation for the upcoming month based on the performance data and goals.
• Adjust ad schedules: Review ad scheduling performance. Adjust the timing of your ads as needed based on monthly insights.
• Review ad messaging: Refresh your ad copy and messaging to keep it relevant and engaging.