The four numbers
- Times shown — often called impressions. Each one is an auction your ad won and a screen it appeared on. More is not better by itself; it says how far the budget reached.
- Clicks — how many of those viewings led someone to tap or click through to your link. This is the first number that measures the ad rather than the budget.
- Spend — what the viewings cost. You pay only for ads that are actually shown. So spend and times shown rise together, and the difference between them from one placement to the next is the price each placement commanded.
- Where and when — by placement, by area and by day. This is the part that tells you what to change, so it is the part to read slowly.
The one ratio worth computing
Divide clicks by times shown and you have the click-through rate: the share of people who saw the ad and acted on it. It measures the ad — the picture, the words, the offer — and the fit between the ad and the place it ran, not the size of your business or budget. Use it to compare like with like: the same ad in two placements, or two ads in the same placement. A rate on its own, with nothing to compare it to, tells you little; a rate that doubled when you changed the headline tells you a lot.
What a report cannot tell you
- Whether a click became a customer — unless you tell it. A report sees the click; what happens on your site afterwards is yours, and only reaches the report if you send those events back.
- Anything from a handful. A few clicks are not a trend, and a quiet day is not a verdict. Read the week, not the day, and compare placements that each had a fair share of viewings.
- Who the people were. The report's figures are counts by placement, area and day, and the conversion report lists conversion events, not people: it has no device identifier, name or email address. The signals an app or page sends with a slot never include a name or an email address either.
How Ailumic’s report reads
One sentence first: what your ad did and what to try next, written by Ailumic from the numbers above. The numbers themselves — times shown, clicks, spend and where it ran, by day — are one click away. Suggestions are yours to accept or ignore; nothing changes without you.
What to do next
Change one thing for the next run, so you know what made the difference: the placement that did best gets more of the budget, or a new headline runs in the same placement, or the same ad runs in a new area. Our guides on how long an ad should run and which format to choose pick up from here.