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Where do you want to see your ads in 2024?
The answer seems to be straightforward –
At the top of the search results page. That’s where you want to see your ads in 2024.
But among the increasing competition, budget constraints, and decisions based on guesswork rather than data, this isn’t an easy undertaking.
If you’re determined to become data-driven, you don’t have to dig around alone. Databox has done extensive research through surveys and Benchmark Groups to get you the latest statistics on how to make sure your Google Ads are converting and driving sales and revenue in 2024.
Here are the 23 findings we’ve identified.
While impressions are essential for brand exposure, it’s crucial to balance them with other Google Ads metrics like CTR, ad quality, and targeting to ensure your advertising campaign’s success. We analyzed several of our benchmark groups to extract the data on Google Ads impressions for both B2B and B2C companies. The results are the following:
Pro tip: Databox offers a wide range of customizable dashboard templates where you can track your ads performance in real-time. Get this free Google Ads Dashboard Template where you can track how often your ads have been displayed to Google users within a specified time frame in combination with other relevant metrics, like clicks, average CPC, conversions, and more.
Clicks in Google Ads represent user engagement with your ads and are essential for measuring the success of your advertising campaign and achieving your goals. We’ve gathered benchmark data for ad clicks:
Pro tip: Monitor your Google Ads campaign clicks in this free, customizable Google Ads Campaign Performance Dashboard Template. This dashboard answers your questions about how many clicks the ads generated, how much it costs you to acquire a new customer, how many ad interactions resulted in conversions, and more.
CTR assesses the effectiveness of your ads in encouraging users to click. A high CTR is generally a positive sign of ad relevance and engagement. Here are our September benchmarks for different industries when it comes to Google Ads CTR:
Pro tip: Regularly review the keywords used in your campaign, refine them, and add negative keywords. This way, you’ll eliminate irrelevant searches and clicks, improving your CTR and the overall performance of your Google ads.
Your Google Ads CPC is influenced by various factors, including competition, ad quality, keyword selection, and bid strategies. Understanding and optimizing CPC is essential for managing your advertising budget and achieving your campaign objectives. Our data from benchmark groups shows the following:
Pro tip: You can implement different tactics to try and lower your CPC, like optimizing your ads for beyond keywords. Instead of paying for your ads to appear everywhere, at all hours, on all devices, optimize the campaigns for specific locations, devices, and timings based on your previous data.
Conversion rate is a critical metric for assessing the success of your ad campaigns in driving user actions. High conversion rates indicate that your ads are effectively persuading users to take desired actions. Our benchmark group data shows the following median values for Google Ads conversion rate across industries:
Pro tip: A compelling CTA can help boost the conversion rate in your next Google Ads campaign. Instead of using the generic “learn more” or “buy now”, try to get creative. For example, include the discount the user is able to claim if they sign up and say: Sign up and save 20%.
Conversions refer to the actions that indicate user engagement and commitment to your business or offer. Our benchmark groups revealed the following statistics across different types of companies:
Pro tip: To make sure you use every opportunity to convert a user into a paying customer, make sure you paint the right picture about what problem your product or service are solving for the user. You’ll achieve that by focusing on benefits, not features in your ad. For example, telling a user a laptop has a 4-core processor doesn’t mean much, but telling them their laptop won’t freeze when they have multiple windows open surely will.
Google Ads costs depend on multiple factors: competition, quality score, bidding strategy, and more. The numbers varied across companies and industries in September 2023—here’s the data from our benchmark groups:
Pro tip: Use A/B testing when running ads to discover which combination of copy, image, and CTA brings the best results. By identifying low-performing elements of your ads and modifying or eliminating them, you can stop your budget from being spent on ineffective campaigns.
Note: For more granular data for your industry, check out our Google Ads Benchmarks by Industry report where you’ll find data from May 2023.
To monitor and improve the performance of your Google Ads campaigns, you can spend hours running a variety of reports and compiling selected metrics manually into one dashboard. Or, you can pull all your data automatically into one dashboard with Databox.
You can instantly review all of your campaigns and drill down on important metrics, such as:
Now you can benefit from the experience of our Google Ads experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing all the key insights you need to optimize your Google Ads campaigns for conversion and ROI. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in PPC reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your Google Ads account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
Over 40% of surveyed companies use Google Ads dominantly to generate more leads, while 30% use them dominantly to drive direct sales. Small percentages of companies use Google Ads for brand awareness and reach or website traffic.
Pro tip: If you’ve set a specific number of leads as a goal, tracking how many your ads have generated in a spreadsheet will be daunting. Instead, try Databox’s goal tracking feature and visualize your progress in real time. This way, you’ll be on top of your numbers at all times and able to react promptly if you notice any of your goals are off track.
More than 20% of respondents focus on either Target CPA or Maximize for conversions while setting a bid for their Google Ads Campaign. Less than 20% of surveyed companies opted for Target ROAS.
Pro tip: Regularly monitor your ad performance KPIs to make sure your goals are being met and your budget isn’t spent on attracting irrelevant audiences. Use this simplified, but holistic Google Ads PPC Performance Dashboard Template in Databox you can access for free and track your key metrics, like cost, conversion value, average CPC, and more.
Most marketers only use 3, 4, or 5 metrics on their KPI dashboard. Around 30% of survey respondents shared that they track between 6 and 10 Google Ads KPIs.
Pro tip: If you wait until the end of your campaign to check its performance, you miss the opportunity to tweak it while it’s running to ensure better results. Databox offers a simple way to monitor your campaigns in real-time. Our KPI Tracking has two incredible features: Alerts, which notify you if your metrics are underperforming, and Insights, which update you about your team’s activities and deliver recommendations on how to improve your performance.
Just above 52% of marketers say that their audience is more likely to engage with ads on Facebook than Google. Still, 45% voted for Google, which isn’t a percentage to be ignored either.
Pro tip: Facebook Ads are better if you’re targeting a very narrowed-down audience and you aim for specific demographics, location, interests, and behaviors. These ads may get you more exposure for less money. However, if you’re advertising to a broader audience with a clear purchase intent, you’re more likely to see conversion happen if you choose Google Ads. Learn more about how Facebook Ads compare to advertising on Google.
For about 80% of the surveyed companies, Responsive Search Ads have the best CTR. Video ads are the second most popular choice.
Pro tip: Responsive ads allow you to use various combinations of headlines and descriptions to reduce ad fatigue and ensure maximum ad efficiency. RSA are great for every buyer’s journey stage, so make sure you understand the user’s intent when searching and tailor your ad messaging to align with where the user is in the buying process.
According to our survey respondents, the top 3 tactics to improve CTR for Google Ads include:
Pro tip: Effective ad copy should contain these three key elements: 1. A clearly stated product or service, 2. Why the user should choose you (the benefit), 3. A compelling CTA. If you’re experiencing writer’s block, check out these 11 examples of great ad copy to inspire you.
According to surveyed advertisers, there are more than 10 recommended tools for PPC keyword forecasting. The top five choices by our survey respondents include: Google Ads Keyword Planner, Google Analytics, Google Trends, Ahrefs, and Google Performance Planner.
Pro tip: Experts typically recommend mixing up forecasting tools as different platforms may be more suitable for different buyer’s journey stages. For example, start with Google Trends to understand how search interest evolved over time. Then, switch to the Keyword Planner to explore more detailed data on volume and build out your forecast. Remember that Databox enables one-click integrations for all these tools so you can easily monitor any metrics from several platforms in a single screen.
When it comes to prioritizing keywords, most prioritize based on either high search intent or branded keywords. Low-intent and competitor keywords didn’t rank high on the list of priorities.
Pro tip: Targeting high-intent and branded keywords ensures that your target users will see ads relevant for their query. This affects your overall ad relevance positively and boosts your CTR. A simple way to make sure the right ads appear for the right keywords is to categorize keywords into ad groups.
According to our respondents, the quality and relevance of ads impact the cost of Google Ads the most. Trends, competition, and industry are other most relevant factors that can influence how much you’ll spend on Google Ads.
Pro tip: Use ad scheduling to control your ad cost by choosing when your ads will be displayed to users. Analyze your campaign data to find any patterns in performance based on various times throughout the day, or days in a week. Aim for peak hours with higher conversion rates and periods with lower competition.
As for the primary strategies to control Google Ad Spend, our respondents voted setting a budget (a daily or monthly budget), monitoring campaigns, and adjusting (lowering) bids for different keywords and ad groups as the top three ways.
Pro tip: To make sure you’re not losing clicks to your competitors, get this free Google Ads (Competitive Health) Dashboard Template to monitor how much you’re being charged per click. This customizable dashboard offers other relevant metrics that visualize your overall ad performance, such as Clicks, Impressions, and CTR.
Over 70% of our respondents, if limited to a single type of ad, would run Google Search Ads rather than Display Ads.
Pro tip: If you can’t decide whether to run display or search ads, this little cheatsheet should help:
Display ads are better for building awareness, remarketing, consumer products, and driving down cost per lead (CPL). Search ads are better for lead generation, driving sales, setting display ad budget, and consumer services.
More than 50% of those who use it think that the main benefit of Google Ads Smart Bidding is that it saves time. Other mentioned benefits include accessibility for inexperienced users and allowing you to “set and forget” your campaign.
Pro tip: If you’re a B2B company with a regular volume of conversions, you can undoubtedly save time by removing manual bidding from the Google Ads setup equation. Use Smart Bidding for campaigns with bottom-funnel conversion goals, such as Target Cost per Acquisition, to leverage AI to do the bidding for you.
Most of the marketers we surveyed use other paid ad platforms in addition to Google Ads. They mainly go to social media. More than 80% use Facebook Ads, almost 50% use Instagram Ads, and about 44% use LinkedIn ads.
Pro tip: Did you know you could monitor your ad campaigns from several platforms in one screen? Databox can do this for you: if you’re running, for example, paid ads on Google and Facebook, you can track your campaigns next to each other to access insights in real-time and faster, so that you can optimize you budgets and invest in the platform that brings better results.
Access this Facebook Ads & Google Ads Dashboard Template for free and track metrics like impressions, cost, clicks, CPC, sessions, and more.
While the PPC metrics companies track vary based on the company’s goals, the top five most popular PPC metrics were click-through-rate (CTR), cost per conversion, cost per lead, cost per acquisition and conversions.
Pro tip: No matter which metrics you choose to track, Databox’s Metrics Screen offers an opportunity to monitor all of them in a single dashboard, without jumping back and forth between screens and tools. You will be able to identify trends faster, quickly find any metric, and customize your dashboard based on your needs—in one click. You can also compare your campaign performance to previous periods and set alerts to notify you if any metrics or your progress towards the goals are off track.
According to our respondents, the most common reason why a campaign might have high CTRs and low conversion rates is a disconnection between the landing page and the copy of the ad.
Pro tip: If you’re seeing a high CTR, but a low conversion rate, look into your landing page. Common fixes include improving design and page load speed. The landing page should have a clear flow and minimal navigation to let the user focus on the key CTA, which should be repeated several times on the page. Make sure the ad copy and the landing page copy are aligned and convey the same message.
CTR, traffic, budget, quality score, and audience are the top five things to look at in a PPC analysis. 50% and more of the companies we spoke to agreed that they monitor these metrics.
Pro tip: Monitoring and reporting on your ad campaigns doesn’t have to be a long, repetitive process that takes up too much of your valuable time. Databox’s dashboard reporting tool allows you to quickly build visually appealing and easy-to-understand reports that are automatically shared with your team and accessible on any device.
From goals to metrics, Databox helps you monitor and understand the performance of your Google Ads campaigns at a glance.
With no-code, streamlined, and customizable dashboards, our platform allows you a complete, granular overview of your most important metrics, and most importantly—you get to see the data in real-time. Our business intelligence solution brings all your numbers—from 100+ data sources—to one screen so that you can make more accurate decisions faster.
No more spending hours on building reports and endless copying and pasting from different tools. No more trying to understand when your campaign got off track only after it’s ended. No more manual sharing of reports with all the stakeholders.Tracking performance with Databox is more complete, faster, and easier. Join 20,000+ businesses that have already improved their campaigns with our tools—sign up for your forever-free account today.
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At Databox, we’re obsessed with helping companies more easily monitor, analyze, and report their results. Whether it’s the resources we put into building and maintaining integrations with 100+ popular marketing tools, enabling customizability of charts, dashboards, and reports, or building functionality to make analysis, benchmarking, and forecasting easier, we’re constantly trying to find ways to help our customers save time and deliver better results.
Stefana Zarić is a freelance writer & content marketer. Other than writing for SaaS and fintech clients, she educates future writers who want to build a career in marketing. When not working, Stefana loves to read books, play with her kid, travel, and dance.
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