Impressions (5)

Why should you track impressions and clicks in Google Analytics?

Tracking ads with Analytics allows you to combine those data with other metrics and use this to optimize your ads. It also takes the pressure of tracking especially impressions in your local database from your server, and therefore saves performance.

Activating ad tracking with Analytics

To use ad tracking with Analytics, go to Advanced Ads > Settings > Tracking and set the tracking method to track using Google Analytics.

This method will be used instead of another local tracking method.

You can also enable Google Analytics tracking in addition to a local tracking method:

1. Switch to that local method and save the settings
2. Add the following line to your wp-config.php

define( ‘ADVANCED_ADS_TRACKING_FORCE_ANALYTICS’, true );

Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

3. Reload the Tracking settings page
4. Enter your Google Analytics publisher ID in the appropriate field and save the settings

If you have set up tracking with Google Analytics as an additional method and want to disable it again, please do not forget to remove the entry from your wp-config.php.

How to analyze ad impressions and clicks in Google Analytics

To analyze impressions or clicks in Analytics, switch to your account and go to Behavior > Events > Overview. As soon as ad impressions or clicks are tracked, you should see Advanced Ads in the Event Category list. This is the number of all impressions and clicks in the given period. The Event Action report lists impressions and clicks. If your blog runs in another language, it might be a translation of these words listed here.

Click on Event Label to get the list of ads. A click on an ad name leads you to the report for impressions and clicks for this ad in the given period.

Testing Analytics tracking

To test if your tracking implementation works, go to Real-Time > Events and the Events (Last 30 min) tab after you perform some activity on your page. Impressions and maybe clicks should appear here. If you just switched on tracking with Analytics, it may take up to 24 hours before impressions and clicks are also showing in Behavior > Events > Overview.

Analytics Quotas and Limits

Google Analytics limits the number of events like ad impressions and clicks you can send to them. You should check the hits and limits on your website using this tool before switching to the Analytics method and then regularly while using it.

You can find the current limits on this page and in shortlisted below:

• The limit for hits per page load is 20. Every second, this limit increases by 2. Hits include page impressions, ad impressions and clicks and any other custom events. Hits related to e-commerce are not counted.
• There is an overall limit of 500 hits per session. Hits that exceed this limit will not be processed.
• The monthly hit limit is 10 million per property. Tip: You could create a new property to track ad impressions only.

Change history

A tool that lists the changes you’ve made to your account during the past two years. See details about changes like when you paused your campaign, who added a keyword, and the amounts of your previous budgets.

• You can view all changes for a particular date range, filter the results by the type of change (such as budget adjustments or keyword edits), or see changes for a particular campaign or ad group.
• The change history tool shows each change within a timeline, mapped to your account data (like impressions, clicks, conversions, clickthrough rate, and cost). Compare your changes with the timeline of performance data to help know which changes may have contributed to changes in your performance.
• If you’ve given other people access to your account using their own login, you can also use the tool to see who made certain changes.
• You can find change history in the “Tools” menu, or go directly to the tool by visiting ads.google.com/ch/ChangeHistory