How to write a monthly PPC client report

You send the monthly report on the first, a tidy PDF with a dozen charts pulled straight from the platform. The client opens it, scrolls, replies "thanks, looks good." You have no idea whether they read past the cover page. And next quarter, when they quietly trim the retainer, that "looks good" turns out to have meant nothing at all.

Short answer: A monthly PPC client report should be built around the two or three decisions the client faces this month (hold spend, shift budget, pause a campaign), not around a grid of every metric the platform exports. Lead with a written summary of what changed and why, then show only the numbers that back each decision.

The takeaways

• A report is a decision document. The client has two or three calls to make this month (hold, shift, or cut budget); the report exists to inform those, and every chart that informs none of them should go.
• Always show the change. 147 conversions means nothing without last month beside it; a number with no comparison is a number the client cannot act on.
• Tailor the cut to the reader. A CEO wants spend, revenue, and one sentence of why; the person running the account wants search terms and placement detail. One PDF for both serves neither.

What is a monthly PPC client report actually for?

It answers one question the client keeps in the back of their mind: is this spend working, and what do we do next month? Everything else is decoration. A report a client skims and forgets has failed even when every figure in it is correct, because displaying data was never the point. Moving a decision was.

Most reports miss this because an export builds them. The platform hands you fifty metrics, you paste them into a template, and the template ships. Nobody asked which of those fifty numbers changes what the client does on Monday. Start from the decision and work backward to the three or four numbers that inform it, and the report almost writes itself.

Which numbers belong in the report, and which don't?

The ones tied to the client's goal, and few others. If the account runs on ROAS, lead with spend, revenue, and ROAS, then the two or three levers moving them. Cost per click and impression share are diagnostics you used to do your job; they are not the client's business unless they explain a result the client cares about.

The reflex to include everything comes from a good place, wanting to look thorough, but it backfires. A page with forty metrics reads as "I didn't know what mattered, so here is all of it." A page with six, each one connected to a decision, reads as someone in control. Cut a metric whenever you cannot finish the sentence "this matters to you because..." about it.

How do you show the change instead of just the number?

Put a comparison next to every figure that carries weight: this month against last, or against the same month last year if the business is seasonal. "147 conversions" is inert. "147 conversions, up from 112, at a €4 lower cost each" tells the client the direction and the cause in a single line.

Direction is the part clients read first. They cannot hold your account's baseline in their head, so an absolute number leaves them guessing whether it counts as good news. Give them the delta and a one-clause reason for it. When a number moved the wrong way, say so plainly and put the fix in the next sentence. A report that only ever reports up is one nobody trusts by month three.

How much of the report should be written analysis?

More than you think, and it goes at the top. Open with three to five sentences in plain prose: total spend, the headline result, how it compares to last month, and the one thing you changed and why. A decision-maker who reads only that paragraph should still know whether the month was good and what happens next.

This is the part auto-generated reports skip, and skipping it is the tell. Charts show what happened; a sentence explains why and what you will do about it. If your report is all dashboards and no writing, you have handed the client raw material and asked them to do the analysis you are being paid for. The charts are there to support the words.

Should the report look different for the CEO and the campaign manager?

Yes, because they make different decisions. The CEO decides whether to keep funding the channel and wants spend, revenue, and a one-line verdict. The person running the account wants the search-term report, the placement breakdown, and what you are testing next. Send the same twelve-page PDF to both and the exec drowns while the operator starves.

The fix is the right level for each reader. It is a discipline worth stealing from good alerting: the morning brief Adscalr sends is role-based and timezone-aware, so the person who needs a spend headline and the person who needs the metric detail each get their own cut of the same underlying data. A monthly report deserves the same care. If you would rather that discipline run on its own, the automation approach sends role-based briefs so the right person gets the right level without you rebuilding a PDF by hand.

Decide who reads it first. Then decide what they see.