The One-Page Paid Search Report for a CMO

The eight-line page, ready to copy

The table below applies the test that Profit Forensics, our independent audit method, puts to any report: a line earns its place only if someone outside the agency can trace it to a source and get the same figure. Copy it as is; only the last column changes each month.

Each line carries four stamps: unit, date window, source and export date. Lines three and four draw on our research on conversions, tracking and scores. Impressions, clicks, click-through rate, bounce rate and Quality Score stay off: they serve the account team, not the board.

Header: Paid search report, [month and year] · Campaigns covered: [list] · Version 1, issued [date] · Data exported [date] · Prepared by [name, role]

Line	What it states	Fill it from	Example entry
1. Business result	Paid search revenue or qualified leads at a named CRM stage, against the month’s plan.	CRM, filtered to the covered campaigns by click ID or source field.	Stage [name]: X leads (plan X) · £X revenue (plan £X) · CRM export [date]
2. Spend	Google Ads cost of the covered campaigns, against the month’s budget.	Campaigns table, total row; billing as a cross-check.	£X (budget £X) · [dates] · export [date]
3. Conversion definition in force	Actions in the reported conversion column, with count setting and window; changes since last month.	Goals → Conversions → Summary; campaign Settings → Goals; Change history.	[Action]: count [one or every], [X]-day window · changes: [none, or what and when]
4. Last month, restated	Last month as first reported and as it stands now.	Last month’s version 1; a fresh export, same column and definition.	First reported X · restated [date]: X · cause: late conversions, same definition
5. Target against actual	The cost per acquisition (CPA) or return on ad spend (ROAS) target given to bidding, and what it delivered.	Bid strategy report.	Average target CPA £X · actual CPA £X · [dates] · or: no target; strategy: [name]
6. Limit on growth	What stops more results at the target: budget, rank, demand or not established.	Campaigns → Columns, per campaign: Search lost IS (budget) and Search lost IS (rank); IS means impression share.	[Campaign]: lost to budget X% · to rank X% · limit: [budget, rank, demand or not established]
7. Recorded changes	What changed in the account and on the platform, and what is unknown.	Campaigns → Change history; Google’s announcements.	[Date] [change] by [user] · platform: [change], [link] · not established: [item]
8. Next decision	One decision, its owner, a review date and the result that would reverse it.	Agreed at the review from lines 1 to 7.	[Decision] · owner [name] · review [date] · reverse if [condition]

Revision log: Version 2, issued [date]: line 4 restated from X to X; cause: late conversions, same definition. A definition change on [date]: last month recalculated from source data, or “not comparable; historical restatement unavailable”. Version 1 kept as issued.

Lines one to four: what the money earned and what counted

Line 1: the CRM result

Line one is the figure your finance team would recognise, set against the month’s plan. If this line stays blank, everything below it measures the platform’s idea of success, not yours.

Line 2: spend

Line two is the one nobody argues about: Google Ads cost for line one’s campaigns, beside the month’s budget. If it differs from billing, the report owes one sentence on why.

Line 3: the conversion definition in force

Line three decides whether this month compares with the last. In our All conversions study, the median account’s category mix moved 6.42 percentage points from 2024 to 2025 while the column kept its name. Counting rules vary too: our lead-counting study found that in four out of five accounts that feed leads into bidding, at least one lead action in the conversions column counts every conversion instead of one per click. Neither figure proves an error. The mix shift spans a year, not a month, and does not say why. This line is how you tell a business change from a counting change.

Line 4: last month, restated

Line four shows last month twice, in the same column and definition. Google’s guide to data discrepancies says Google Ads “reports conversions on the ad impression date”, not the conversion date, so a late conversion can land in a month already reported. Its help on conversion lag reporting adds that lagging figures “can sometimes cause CPA to look inflated and ROAS to look deflated”.

Lines five to eight: what changed and what happens next

Line 5: target against actual

Line five sets the bidding target beside what it delivered over the same dates: the average target in Google’s bid strategy report, not today’s setting. With no target, naming the strategy fills the line: the report shows “metrics specific to the type of bid strategy”. The same page says to “wait until all your conversions have been reported” before judging a strategy. Check line five against line three: a target met under a changed definition is a different result, not a better one.

Line 6: the limit on growth

Line six names the limit: budget, rank (bids and ad quality), demand or “not established”. For Search, check impression share (the share of estimated eligible impressions your ads received) lost to budget and to rank, campaign by campaign. Google defines each lost share as “the percentage of time that your ads weren’t shown” for that reason; demand and reachable volume at the target need other evidence. In our Search impression share study, the median campaign-month lost 43.18% of impression share to rank and 1.24% to budget, two separate medians. They are shares of eligible time, not money, and not a rule for your account, but they show why a budget request should arrive with the budget column attached.

Line 7: recorded changes

Line seven lists account changes from Change history, then announced platform changes that affect you. Google’s help on change history says users can view “who made certain changes”. The word that matters is “certain”: the same page notes that some account-level settings changes, and changes made by Google representatives during consultations, may not be listed. So the line ends with what could not be established.

Line 8: the next decision

Line eight is one decision, not “continue optimising”. “Move £X from campaign A to campaign B, owner [name], review [date], reverse if CRM-qualified leads fall below X” is one.

The restatement rule for late conversions

Late conversions are normal; the risk is how a report handles them. In a two-step funnel the fast signal and the money arrive on different clocks: an enquiry is recorded soon after the click, while the revenue follows the sales team’s timetable.

The trap is the silent overwrite: last month’s figures replaced in place, so this month is compared with a number the board never saw, and nobody can tell whether the business moved or the counting did. The rule: keep version one as issued, and when a line moves, issue a dated version two with both figures and one sentence on the cause.

Late arrivals under the same definition are the month filling in: restate, and say so. A changed definition is different. Google’s help on conversion windows says “any changes apply to all conversions going forward”, so a window edited mid-month does not reach back for conversions the old window had missed. Months either side of that edit are not like for like, and line three should flag it.

Then set a close date, after which a month is final, chosen from your own data on how long conversions and CRM deals take to arrive. It is a reporting rule for your board, not something Google prescribes. Until then, mark the month provisional.

What this template will not show

The page is a control, not an investigation, with four blind spots. It will not prove that paid search caused the result on line one; that takes a controlled test. It will not replace an event-level reconciliation between Google Ads and the CRM: line one states the CRM result, not whether or why Google Ads differs. It cannot report a change that no source recorded. And it does not judge the target on line five, which can be met every month and still sit above what the business can afford.

What to check in your account

1. Find the conversion definition in last month’s report. If it is missing, have it rebuilt from a saved export or dated configuration, checked against Change history, not from today’s settings; failing that, write “historical definition not established”.
2. In Campaigns, open Columns and confirm which conversion column the report used; Segment → Conversions → Conversion action shows which actions made the total.
3. Open each campaign’s Settings → Goals and compare the goals bidding pursues with that definition.
4. Go to Tools → Budgets and bidding → Bid strategies, open each strategy’s report and copy the month’s average target and actual result.
5. Open Campaigns → Change history, set the dates to the report month and read the User column against line seven.
6. Export last month again in the same conversion column, segmented by conversion action, and match the actions to the saved definition. Same actions, moved total: ask for a dated version two with the cause, not a corrected version one. Different actions: recalculate line four from source data, or mark it “not comparable”.
7. In the CRM, pull the same month’s revenue or qualified leads for the covered campaigns at the stage named on line one, and note the export date.

When this does not apply

Your sales cycle is longer than your reporting cycle. When deals close months after the click, restating last month is not enough: the money for this month’s leads arrives on a later clock. Report line one by the month the lead arrived, and keep each month provisional until your own data shows that month’s deals have closed.

The board judges marketing on a blended model. If paid search is judged inside a cross-channel attribution or marketing mix model, line one depends on that model’s rules. Name the model on line one, or the page will disagree with the finance view for reasons nobody can check.

When to ask for an independent check

Ask when a line cannot be filled, not when a number looks bad. A weak month on a complete page is a conversation with your agency. A month in which nobody can say which actions counted, the CRM-matched result is missing, or last month’s figures change without a dated version is a measurement problem, which the next report will not fix. If the report cannot fill the CRM line, that gap is where a Profit Forensics audit starts.

Researcher’s take

I read reports for what they leave out. A deck full of activity can hide that nobody owns the outcome; eight sourced lines make that easier to spot. The line I fight for is the definition, because every comparison on the page rests on it. My rule for late conversions: numbers may change, versions may not. One page, eight lines, every line traceable.

Igor Ivitskiy, Doctor Ads Profit Forensics

FAQ

What should a monthly paid search report for a marketing director include?

The eight lines in the table above, each with a unit, date window, source and export date. The two that decide whether the rest can be trusted are the conversion definition in force and last month restated.

What one-page view of paid search should go to the board?

The same page. The board reads the CRM result against plan, spend against budget and the decision first; the definition and restatement lines tell it whether this month compares with the last.

Last month’s conversions keep changing after we’ve reported them. How should our report handle late conversions?

Keep the version you reported and issue a dated version two with both figures and the cause; a definition change needs source data or a “not comparable” note. Google Ads reports conversions on the ad impression date, so expect movement until the month’s close date.

How we know

Google Ads Help, checked 19 October 2026: Data discrepancies: Factors and troubleshooting; About conversion lag reporting; Get impression share data; About conversion windows; About change history; Bid strategy report for automated bidding strategies; How to find your bid strategy reports. Quotations are word for word.

Figures from our published studies: 6.42 percentage points from our All conversions study; 43.18% and 1.24% from our Search impression share study; four out of five from our lead-counting study.

No new portfolio data in this article: it combines Google’s documentation (checked 19 October 2026) with what our audits look for. Where a figure comes from our published studies, the study is linked.

Opinion, signed: the eight lines, the four stamps, the restatement rule and the close date are Igor Ivitskiy’s reporting standard in Doctor Ads Profit Forensics, not a Google requirement or an industry benchmark. Forum questions are paraphrased without names.