In the last post, we saw how Zoho Reports helps in providing a more comprehensive analysis of your Google Adwords campaigns than what's provided by Google Adwords in the form of reports. In this post, we'll see how to use Zoho Reports to analyze the performance of your various Ad Groups within a campaign. Our featured example is for a Mountain Bikes campaign which is having 4 Ad Groups - Adult Bikes, Kids Bikes, Athletic Bikes and a Common Keywords Ad Group.

The below report shows how the CTR has varied for the different Ad Groups over the months.

To get a more recent analysis, the time period can be changed to see how the CTR has varied over the last month alone.

Pivot tables can be made too. The below pivot lists the monthly conversions for all Ad Groups since Jan 2007.

You can also analyze how the various parameters within an Ad Group has performed. For example, you can compare the number of conversions vs the number of clicks.

A scatter plot can be plotted to see which Ad Group is more effective, say in terms of conversions for the ad impressions got.

The above are just a few report samples. The whole set of data and reports are available at http://reports.zoho.com/ZDBPublicDBView.cc?DBID=4000000176044. And this set of Ad Groups-level reports are readily available for your Google Adwords analysis too. All you have to do is to follow the easy steps as mentioned in this page and you can have the same reports as above for your Google Adwords account as well.

It is easy and powerful to analyze your Google Adwords Campaigns and Ad Groups (you can analyze for ads etc too) by importing the csv data files provided by Google Adwords into Zoho Reports. As said in our earlier post, we are working on a Google Adwords connector which will let you do this more readily. Stay tuned.

Google Adwords has become a very important advertising medium for all advertisers & marketing professionals. As one using Google Adwords, you should be analyzing your various campaigns, adgroups, ads etc constantly. But the readymade reports provided by Google Adwords are pretty rudimentary and have the below disadvantages.

• There aren't actually many report options. The report consists of rows of data which you can see as HTML or export as a csv/xls files.
• The only chart option given plots only one metric (CPM, Clicks, CTR etc) at a time.
• The chart and the data are separate and this means you can't drill down a chart to see the underlying data.
• The reports don't allow you to compare how two different campaigns are performing. Or how a campaign in July 2009 (current month) performed as against June 2009 (previous month) or July 2008 (same month, previous year).
• The charts cannot be saved for referencing anytime later.
• The charts cannot be shared or collaborated upon online.

With Zoho Reports, you can do a lot of analysis with the data provided by Google Adwords. Multiple metrics can be plotted and studied. Comparisons between campaigns can be done and a campaign can be compared to how it had performed across different time lines (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or even yearly). Based on such analysis, you can take actions to reduce costs and get higher returns for the money you spend on Google Adwords.

Let's see in this post how Zoho Reports can help you analyze various campaigns & allow you to get the maximum bang for your buck (lower costs, more conversions etc). Embedded below are charts with real data from a Google Adwords account that we have set up. The campaigns have been renamed generically as for mountain bikes. There are 3 campaigns being run, one in the US, one in Europe and one comprising of other countries in Australasia and Africa since Jan 2007.

The above chart shows the avg cost / conversion trends across the various campaigns.

This chart shows how the CTR has varied over the months for the three campaigns. The above two examples compare how various campaigns are performing with respect to each other. We can also compare how a campaign's various metrics have performed over time.

The above chart plots the impressions vs clicks for the Europe campaign over the past year. If pretty charts aren't your cup of tea, you can make pivot tables. Like this one for example, which plots the quarterly conversions for the campaigns.

The embedded reports above are just a few samples. The original database with a slew of reports for the three example campaigns are available here - http://reports.zoho.com/ZDBDataSheetView.cc?DBID=4000000163350. You can play around the data, create as many reports as you want and see for yourselves how flexible and powerful your Adwords Campaign data becomes, when using the right business intelligence tool.

Most importantly, all these set of campaign-level reports are readily available for your Google Adword analysis. All you have to do is to follow the easy steps as mentioned in this page and you can have the same reports as above for your Google Adwords campaigns as well. We are planning to make this easier further by providing a direct Zoho Reports connector to your Google Adwords account soon.

Next, we'll see with examples how to analyze your Google Adwords campaigns at the Adgroups level.

So much of your business data from many of your applications lie in a database like Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL or MS Access, behind a firewall. Getting meaningful reports out of such databases and taking corrective actions based on those reports is what business intelligence is all about. The databases themselves are typically costly and creating reports out of them isn't that easy. Buying additional reporting tools, which you need to install and maintain, adds up to your costs. But by making your data available in Zoho Reports, you get these major benefits :

1. Create meaningful reports easily using just drag-and-drop
2. The reports you create are accessible from anywhere
3. Enable collaborative analysis and reporting
   
4. Share the reports over the web to whoever you want
5. Very affordable, pay-as-you-go monthly pricing plans (Zoho Reports is actually free, as of now)
   

As the diagram above shows, the tool works in a simple way. It is a database connector that pulls data from your databases and uploads it to Zoho Reports. Data gets transfered securely over the Internet to Zoho Reports using a secured connection (HTTPS).  You can then create powerful reports  and analysis based on the data uploaded. Read more about how to move data from your in-house databases to Zoho Reports.

If you are interested in using Zoho Reports for your business intelligence and reporting needs, do contact us for a personalized demo.

We posted about enhancements done to the pivot table recently in Zoho Reports. Here's more. Pivot tables (and charts, filters) now support quarterly and weekly intervals. This adds to yearly, monthly intervals before. This can be best explained in the sales context. What if you want to know how you did in 1Q 2009 Vs 4Q 2008 (previous quarter) or 1Q 2008 (previous year, same quarter)? Or what if you want to know how you did this week compared to last week or see the trends of the earlier weeks? It is easy now to have reports for such scenarios.



The screenshot above is for the Actual Values - Quarter & Year, sales in various quarters of each year. Seasonal/Cyclic - Quarter option differs from this as it will give the sum of Quarterly Sales summed across years.



Similarly, the Weekly option is available too. Sales figures of different regions for the various weeks in 2008 shown as a Pivot table.



The same quarter & week concepts are available in Charts and Summary Views.




You can also Filter the data using Quarter and Week timelines.



Try the new Quarterly & Weekly options in Zoho Reports and let us know your feedback in the comments.

Related Links

• Screencast : How to create a Pivot in Zoho Reports
• Screencast : How to create a Chart in Zoho Reports
• Sales Analysis with Zoho Reports
  

1. Dynamic Chart Filtering and URL Data type in Zoho Reports
2. Zoho Reports : Pivot Table Enhancements
3. Quickly Generate Similar Reports in Zoho Reports
   

The latest update of Zoho Reports brings in dynamic filter in live charts and support for URL (HyperLink) as a datatype.

Dynamic Filtering in Live Chart     

Say you are analyzing how the various campaigns of your Google Adwords account have performed using your Adwords Reporting database in Zoho Reports. Let's say you have three campaigns for mountain bikes, one each for the Europe and the US and one for other countries/continents. And you want to look at the data from Europe and the USA alone. You can mouse over on the chart legend and uncheck that data alone.


Zoho Reports hides that particular data and will dynamically regenerate the chart with the remaining data.



You can click on the same checkbox again to see the hidden data back.



You can hide multiple data lines too. For example, you can see the data for the US alone (hiding Europe and Others) by clicking on the yellow checkbox as shown below.





The dynamic filter functionality is available on charts that are embedded in any of your web applications or blogs too. Embedding the chart used in the above screenshots below. Go ahead, click on the checkboxes and try the functionality yourselves.

• Measure your Google Adwords Campaign Performance with Zoho Reports
• See how Zoho Reports compares with a spreadsheet like Microsoft Excel

The latest Zoho Reports update brings in the 'Query over Query' functionality, which has been one of the top request from our users. You can now have SELECT queries that combine already existing Query Tables. Let's see an example of how this comes in handy. Say you have a Sales table with sales figures for various customers, products, regions etc across years.

The above Query Table in 'View Mode' with the customer names in alphabetical order.

• Zoho Reports : Pivot Table Enhancements
• Relational Data Modeling in Zoho Reports
  
• Quickly Generate Similar Reports in Zoho Reports