GA4 Custom Reports for PPC Explained

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Data-driven strategies are essential in digital marketing. One of the prominent components of such a strategy is the utilization of analytics. While marketing analytics is beneficial, we cannot fail to mention its role in PPC campaigns, particularly leveraging Google Analytics 4 to track your campaign performance.

Marketers had to switch to GA4 last year and adapt to its functionality, including reporting features. As a physicians email database result, it divided specialists: some use default reports, but some PPC professionals customize their reports based on their needs. In general, Google Analytics 4 offers the option of custom reports, which help track the results of advertising campaigns with the chosen dimensions and metrics.

This article will explore GA4’s reporting capabilities, the benefits and challenges of custom reporting in GA4, and how you can create a PPC report on this platform. But let’s start by exploring default and custom reports.

GA4 Default or Custom PPC Reports?
Google Analytics 4 's default reports offer an out-of-the-box way to access standard metrics and dimensions, providing insights into specific aspects. These pre-configured reports do not require any additional configuration, so users can access them easily.

There are two main types of default reports: general reports and detailed reports.

General report


Overview Report in Google AnalyticsDetailed report

Detail Report in Google Analytics
GA4’s default reports cover a wide range of PPC-focused data points, making them a valuable resource for beginners and those who need quick access to metrics without extensive setup.

As PPC data begins to flow into GA4, it initially appears in the real-time report and populates other PPC-related reports shortly thereafter. While some data is collected automatically, additional setup may be required to obtain specific types of information.

GA4's default reports offer a high-level view of your campaign's performance. However, they may not delve into the details you need to thoroughly analyze your PPC campaigns.

The default dimensions provide information in several categories:

User Demographics: Age, Gender, Interests, Location

Technical details: Device category (mobile, computer, tablet), Browser

User Interactions: Session Start Time, Page Views, Triggering Events

Acquisition Channels: Traffic source (direct, organic search, paid ads, social media).

These measurements help to understand user behavior and optimize PPC campaigns .

On the other hand, custom GA4 reports offer a more tailored approach. They allow you to focus on specific metrics. They cover adding and removing metrics and dimensions, applying filters, changing sorting criteria, adding a secondary dimension, updating the reporting collection, and using report settings for further exploration. This way, you can gain deeper insights into your campaign performance.

You can create up to 150 custom reports per property in Google Analytics. You can also customize both detailed and general reports.

Note: If you don't see the option, you don't have permission to customize the detailed report.

By setting up custom dimensions, such as purchased product categories or user IDs, you'll gain the flexibility to drill down into the details of your PPC data.