A 5-step framework for year-end PPC reports that resonate with leadership

The brand new yr is right here, which suggests it’s time to ship your end-of-year (EOY) PPC report.

However an EOY report isn’t only a longer model of your month-to-month performance check-in. 

It’s sometimes learn by a different audience – usually management groups who don’t see your common reporting – and it wants to inform a distinct story.

Completed nicely, your year-end report units the tone for 2026, earns buy-in on your technique, and positions you as a strategic associate reasonably than only a marketing campaign supervisor. 

Completed poorly, it creates confusion and undermines confidence in your work.

Right here’s how you can construct an EOY PPC report that speaks to management and units your work up for fulfillment within the yr forward.

1. Establish your viewers and their priorities

You wouldn’t launch a brand new marketing campaign with out clearly outlined targets and audiences. 

Don’t do it along with your EOY report, both. Totally different stakeholders consider efficiency by means of very totally different lenses.

For instance, among the many purchasers I’m getting ready stories for this yr are:

• A management workforce I’ve by no means met (regardless of working with this consumer for eight years) that desires a most five-page report at a really excessive stage.
• An information-driven CEO who desires a transparent narrative connecting PPC spend, selections, and outcomes.
• A brand new director who desires context on the aggressive panorama, efficiency, and particular alternatives for subsequent yr.

If I had been to make use of a carbon-copy EOY report template for all of them, I’d have at greatest one completely happy management workforce and two confused or annoyed groups. 

I don’t look after these odds. As a substitute, I’m customizing every report back to match the readers and their particular wants.

When you don’t know the recipients (and when you’re at an company, there’s a very good probability you don’t), ask your major contact questions like: 

• Who shall be receiving the report?
• What do they care about most? 
• What’s prime of thoughts for them heading into subsequent yr?
• What selections will they be making primarily based on this report? 

The solutions ought to instantly inform the report’s construction, depth, metrics, and size. 

When your viewers is clearly outlined upfront, the ultimate report is way extra prone to drive readability, alignment, and confidence.

2. Create an easy-to-read government abstract

Your government abstract has one job – assist management shortly perceive how PPC carried out throughout key metrics. 

Consider it because the “at a look” web page that units the context for the whole lot that follows.

When you studied communications formally, you in all probability discovered to put in writing government summaries final, despite the fact that they seem first. 

Because you’re pulling information reasonably than crafting prose, flip that strategy. 

Construct this part first to information the circulation of what comes subsequent.

Lead with the KPIs that matter most

Begin with the metrics your viewers truly cares about – those that had been established as priorities at first of the engagement or yr. 

This can often embody income, leads, and conversions, however your mileage could range. 

In case your management workforce obsesses over market share or engagement, lead with these as an alternative.

Embrace significant benchmarks

Except your management workforce is dialed into PPC targets and efficiency, that you must give them benchmarks in order that they have a comparability device. 

Use at the least one in every of these three key benchmarks:

• 12 months-over-year efficiency: How did this yr stack up in opposition to final yr?
• Efficiency in opposition to goal: Did we hit the targets we got down to obtain?
• Business benchmarks: How can we examine to competitors or business averages?

Within the instance under, I’m exhibiting income, ROAS, and value for the yr, with each share adjustments and uncooked numbers from the earlier yr.

This format does the heavy lifting for busy executives. 

At a fast look, they know what occurred and whether or not it’s excellent news. 

Extra importantly, it units the stage for invisible CTAs and the deeper evaluation that follows.

3. Break down efficiency particulars

Within the following part, you’ll transfer from “what occurred” to “why it occurred and what we discovered.” 

The manager abstract informed your reader whether or not the yr was profitable. Now that you must present them the engine underneath the hood.

The extent of element will rely on the format. A five-page government report could solely have room for a couple of pivotal moments, whereas a extra complete report can get into the weeds. 

In both case, selectivity is important. You may’t — and shouldn’t — doc each metric, check, or optimization from the yr.

As a substitute, give attention to insights that both clarify the ends in your government abstract or level on to alternatives for the yr forward.

Listed below are some classes to get you began.

What carried out greatest 

Present them the winners: your best-converting artistic, highest-revenue merchandise, or best channels. 

Management likes to see what’s working, and it may possibly level to the place to double down. 

How sources had been allotted

Break down spend distribution throughout campaign types, the break up between model and non-brand, or platform-specific investments like Google versus Bing. 

Management desires to know when you’re placing cash the place it issues most, and this part solutions that query.

What you examined and discovered

Spotlight new initiatives, strategic experiments, or incrementality tests. 

Did you check a brand new platform? Strive a distinct focusing on strategy? 

These insights present you aren’t simply managing campaigns, you’re advancing the technique.

Tendencies that formed the yr

Embrace year-over-year comparisons, seasonal patterns, and efficiency developments over time. 

If Q3 noticed uncommon momentum or vacation efficiency differed from earlier years, clarify why.

Efficiency by means of the funnel

Present how customers moved by means of your conversion funnel and the place the largest alternatives or bottlenecks exist.

Monitoring and conversion adjustments

Altering what is counted as a conversion will have an effect on nearly the whole lot else. 

When you made monitoring or conversion definition adjustments throughout the yr, name them out right here.

Management wants to grasp if a metric shift displays precise efficiency or a measurement change.

Hold this part platform-specific and substantive. Every perception ought to clearly tie again to the chief abstract. 

Use visuals (charts, pattern strains, and comparability tables) to make complicated information simpler to interpret. And resist the temptation to incorporate the whole lot you observe. 

If a metric doesn’t clarify outcomes, reply a query from management, or inform future technique, go away it out.

4. Consider exterior elements

You’ve already defined what occurred within the account and why efficiency moved the best way it did. 

Now that you must zoom out and present management what else was taking place. What exterior forces formed your outcomes, for higher or worse?

That is the place you separate execution from surroundings. 

With out this context, robust strategic work can look mediocre in a troublesome yr, or weak selections can disguise behind tailwinds. 

Management wants to grasp what you managed versus what you had been responding to.

Consider it this fashion: efficiency particulars add context to your KPIs. Exterior elements add context to your efficiency.

Digital advertising elements

What influenced efficiency that was exterior to paid search execution, however inside to the broader advertising ecosystem?

• Non-PPC advertising initiatives: Product launches, pricing adjustments, promotions, web site redesigns, or messaging shifts can all affect conversion charges and search habits – positively or negatively.
• Non-PPC channel efficiency: Efficiency in natural search, e-mail, social, associates, or offline channels can meaningfully affect paid search outcomes. It additionally offers a clearer image of market elements past paid channels.

• Platform and coverage adjustments: Google Ads feature rollouts, automation shifts, coverage enforcement, or reporting adjustments usually have an effect on efficiency in ways in which aren’t instantly seen in metrics alone.
• Aggressive dynamics: New entrants, aggressive bidding, artistic shifts, or adjustments in competitor habits can alter public sale strain and effectivity over time.

Macro-economic elements

What forces outdoors the advertising group formed demand, habits, and constraints?

A helpful technique to construction this evaluation is with a light-weight PESTEL lens, tailored for a advertising context.

• Political: Gov actions and coverage shifts (e.g., tariffs, shutdowns).
• Financial: Market situations (e.g., inflation, spending slowdowns).
• Social: Conduct and life-style developments (e.g., journey, demographics).
• Technological: Platform/tech adjustments (e.g., AI, privateness updates).
• Environmental: Climate and seasonality (e.g., storms, local weather shifts).
• Authorized: Laws and compliance (e.g., privateness legal guidelines, labor guidelines).

You don’t want to handle each class. The objective is to focus on the elements that materially influenced efficiency and selections throughout the yr.

In a unstable yr like this one, it may possibly even make sense to focus on large occasions that didn’t have an effect on efficiency, simply to assuage any worries.

Doing this helps stakeholders perceive what elements contributed to efficiency.
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And simply as essential, it positions you as somebody who sees past the interface to significant enterprise implications.

5. Reply the ‘what’s subsequent?’ query

Management desires to know what to anticipate for subsequent yr. 

They’re not essentially anticipating a crystal ball, however they do need confidence that there’s a plan, even when the trail adjustments.

The truth is that almost all paid search technique isn’t mapped a yr prematurely. 

Platforms change, rivals react, budgets shift, and new constraints seem with little warning. 

What issues isn’t having each reply upfront, it’s having a transparent technique to determine what to do subsequent when situations change.

This part of your EOY report is your alternative to point out that decision-making framework, and get your viewers excited to work with you on what’s to return.

Subsequent steps and proposals

These are the initiatives you’re dedicated to pursuing; the strategic strikes grounded in final yr’s information:

• Utilized learnings: How insights from the previous yr are shaping priorities, construction, and decision-making going ahead.
• Recognized alternatives: Areas the place information persistently pointed to upside: channels, audiences, merchandise, or techniques that warrant consideration.
• Identified dangers: Challenges management ought to anticipate, together with the way you’re monitoring or mitigating them.
• Useful resource readability: What further finances, instruments, or assist would allow — and what stays constrained with out them. Be concrete: “With X further finances, we will check Y primarily based on Z perception from final yr.”

These suggestions ought to really feel inevitable; the logical subsequent steps given what occurred final yr.

Testing pipeline

Then there’s the opposite class: stuff you’re watching, excited about, or prepared to leap on if circumstances align. 

These scratch management’s itch for innovation and cutting-edge options with out overcommitting:

• New platform options you’ll check after they’re launched.
• Rising platforms or initiatives price monitoring.
• Aggressive techniques you’ve recognized however want extra validation.
• Opportunistic assessments if finances or priorities shift.

Body these as “if/then” eventualities or “issues we’re monitoring” reasonably than agency commitments. 

Management will get to really feel such as you’re on prime of business developments with out anticipating ensures.

A remaining go by means of a management lens

You’ve lined quite a lot of floor. 

This remaining go is about tightening credibility and ensuring this work pays dividends within the coming years, not simply this one.

Give your report a remaining go

Earlier than sending, evaluation the report the best way management will:

• Supply your information clearly: Label the place every chart’s information got here from and when it was pulled. This prevents follow-up questions and builds belief.
• Tackle negatives head-on: Management expects challenges. What erodes confidence isn’t unhealthy information, it’s unexplained unhealthy information. Present what didn’t work, why, and what you probably did about it.
• Strain-test in opposition to the transient: Evaluation your stakeholders’ unique requests. Did you truly reply their questions? Ask a colleague (or AI) for a second set of eyes.

Make subsequent yr simpler

Now that you simply’ve achieved the heavy lifting, leverage this work going ahead:

• Flip your EOY report right into a client-specific template: A single format received’t work throughout all purchasers, however when you discover a construction that resonates with a given viewers, reuse it yr over yr. Incorporate suggestions and refresh the info, however preserve the core framework constant.
• Monitor large points as they occur: Doc key occasions as you progress by means of the yr. Hold a working record, outdoors of emails and stories. Even the largest points immediately shall be arduous to precisely bear in mind in 12 months with out this.

12 months-end stories take actual effort. Be sure that yours truly resonates. 

Comply with these steps to strengthen stakeholder relationships and place your self as a strategic associate for 2026 and past.