This article only applies to the previous AdWords experience. Determine which AdWords experience you’re using.
Once your image and video ads are live, you'll want to monitor how they're doing across the Google Display Network. You can use your campaign statistics tables on the Ads and Dimensions tabs to review standard performance information for image and video ads. You can also monitor free clicks interactions to monitor how customers engage with special interactive ad formats. Learn more about display ad performance reporting for the following:
- Standalone image ads (image ads built outside of the Ad gallery)
- Image ads built with the Ad gallery
- Video ads built with the Ad gallery
See how your display ads are performing
You can view most of your image ads performance statistics on the Ads tab of your Google Ads account. You can also try out the following reporting options:
- Use the "Free clicks" view on the Dimensions tab to see several additional statistics for your image and video ads (including those built with the Ad gallery).
- Customize your ads statistics table to show specific placement metrics for your ads performance on the Display Network. The available performance metrics will vary depending on the image ad format you’ve chosen.
Track customer interactions with free clicks data
Display ad formats come in all shapes and sizes. There are various ways to interact with image and video ads, and depending on the format and pricing you choose, you may have some interactions with a display ad format that are free. These won't appear in your statistics tables alongside your normal reporting, but you can run and download the free clicks report to better understand how your ads are doing. Here are some examples of free clicks statistics:
Display ad mouseover (at least one second)
See instances where customers place their cursors over your display ad for a second or more. This can help highlight ads that may keep customers’ attention without an actual clickthrough to your website. This usually demonstrates an ad that needs a stronger call-to-action for the customer.
Display ad interactions
Depending on the type of ad you build with the Ad gallery, there may be additional variations of customer interactions available in your report.
Video play 25, 50, 75, and 100% (quartiles)
Learn how much of your video ads customers actually see. Video ads with low play rates or early viewer drop-off may indicate a creative change that needs to take place to keep people engaged with the video content.
Example
The Playbacks through 50% of the video column, for example, will display the number of playbacks that reached at least halfway through the video. Keep in mind that because people may skip to different sections of the video, percent playback numbers won't always decline linearly.
Tip
- "Play rate" is synonymous with "interaction rate" for video ads, as well as "view rate," which is used for video campaigns featuring TrueView video ad formats.
- You can download free clicks data for additional ad interactions reporting.
Tracking viewer conversions for video ads
Conversion trackingYou can use Google Ads conversion tracking to track the number of people who click on a video ad and ultimately perform the desired conversion action.
Since video advertising doesn’t always drive immediate conversions, we recommend that you look at view-through conversion data, which shows the number of online conversions that happened within 30 days after a viewer saw, but did not click, your video ad.
Learn more about view-through conversionsA tracking pixel is similar to Google Ads conversion tracking code. It's code that’s inserted into the video ad itself (provided by a third-party ad server). This code tracks the IP address of the viewer. This pixel tracks cases when someone doesn’t click on the ad, but comes back to the website in your final URL later. If you use third-party tracking pixels, you'll need to use your own external reporting tools to evaluate the data.
You can get the same result with a "view-through conversion" (described in the section above) as opposed to a "click-through conversion."
Google Ads no longer accepts third-party tracking pixels for YouTube measurement or YouTube inventory of Demand Gen campaigns. Learn more about the changes to third-party measurement and follow the 2 steps in its entirety to successfully enable third-party measurement for YouTube.
Next steps
- Video campaigns feature more robust performance data than video ads in the Ad gallery. Learn more
- Download free clicks data for additional ad interactions reporting.
