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A review of free PPC reporting solutions from Google

Columnist Frederick Vallaeys tried out Data Studio to see where it shines and where it might fall short for search marketers.

Frederick Vallaeys on February 24, 2017 at 12:45 pm

Doing PPC reporting right often involves some trade-offs between time and money. The perfect report takes a lot of time to build — time that could have been spent improving the performance of an account. A quick and repeatable report, on the other hand, is usually generated through a tool that costs money. So the arrival of Data Studio, which offers very customizable reporting, and now does so at a cost of $0, warrants an investigation to determine how it can help account managers.

Because the tool suite of my company, Optmyzr, also includes PPC reporting, spending the time to evaluate Data Studio made sense to me. So if you’re overworked and can’t really spare a few hours to look at Data Studio yourself, get my take on it here in a quick 10-minute read. I’ll even share a handful of cool reports you can make.

Why trust my opinion? Because my personal credibility in this industry hinges on being helpful to advertisers. So while I’ve got skin in the game, for this post I put on my agency hat and tried out Data Studio to see where it shines and where it might fall short for search marketers.

What is Data Studio?

While Data Studio is not new (it was announced in March of 2016), it wasn’t a tool for most of us because there was a five-report limit per user — hardly enough for the average consultant or agency. Anyone who needed more reports had to buy a license for Google Data Studio 360.

With the recent announcement that this limit no longer applies to the free version, Data Studio is worth a new look for anyone who balked at the high price before.

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Frederick Vallaeys

Frederick (“Fred”) Vallaeys was one of the first 500 employees at Google where he spent 10 years building AdWords and teaching advertisers how to get the most out of it as the Google AdWords Evangelist. Today he is the Cofounder of Optmyzr, an AdWords tool company focused on unique data insights, One-Click Optimizations™, advanced reporting to make account management more efficient, and Enhanced Scripts™ for AdWords. He stays up-to-speed with best practices through his work with SalesX, a search marketing agency focused on turning clicks into revenue. He is a frequent guest speaker at events where he inspires organizations to be more innovative and become better online marketers.