You're spending money on paid ads every single month, and when you ask how it's going, you get told impressions are up and clicks look great. But your phone hasn't been any busier, and you're not shifting stock any faster. Sound familiar?
That's what happens when PPC reporting is built around the wrong metrics. Clicks and traffic feel good on paper, but they don't pay the bills. In this guide, we here at WeAdvertiseAnyCar break down exactly how to measure PPC success the right way.
Whenever we set up GVA for our clients, we always ask what results they want to see from their ads. Most of them want more sales, but how does that really look online? For most UK dealers, that's a short list: phone calls, online enquiries, and test-drive bookings are what will lead to a successful transaction.
The mistake we see constantly is dealers reporting on activity rather than outcomes, which often results in their money being wasted on traffic that doesn’t convert. A campaign can generate thousands of clicks and still deliver zero sales. So define your outcomes first, then work backwards to the metrics that actually reflect them.
If you’ve got your PPC campaign up and running and you’re not tracking the results you’re getting from it, you risk not knowing if that campaign is actually working and how well, or if it’s a total flop.
There are two layers you need to have in place. First, Google Ads conversions track specific actions taken on your website, such as a finance enquiry form being submitted, a click-to-call button being tapped, or a vehicle details page being viewed. Second, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is Google’s analytics platform, which gives you a fuller picture of user behaviour and lets you see how paid traffic interacts with your site compared to other channels.
Both need to be configured correctly, with the right conversion events being tracked and attributed to paid clicks. If your agency can't show you a clear conversion setup with defined actions and values, you should flag this up.
If you're wondering what values you should be looking at, you’re not alone. Most dealers don’t know where to see the real results from PPC campaigns. The table below shows the metrics you need to track and what they mean, no marketing jargon involved.
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Click Through Rate (CTR) |
Of everyone who saw your ad, the CTR shows the percentage that did. A higher CTR generally means your ads are relevant and compelling |
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Cost Per Click (CPC) |
This metric shows how much you’re paying for every person who clicks your ad. On its own, CPC means very little; the question always happens after the click. |
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Conversion Rate |
It tracks who took a meaningful action, such as making an enquiry or calling the dealership of everyone who clicked. |
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Cost Per Lead (CPL) |
It’s how much it’s costing you to generate each enquiry. Take your total ad spend, divide it by the number of leads generated, and you’ve got your cost per lead. |
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Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) |
Simply, how much revenue you’re generating for every pound you put in. This can get complicated as the sale often happens offline |
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Impression Share |
The percentage of relevant searches where you ad showed up. |
Most of the dealers we work with take enormous volumes of phone enquiries. If those calls aren't being tracked back to your ad campaigns, you're significantly underreporting your results.
Call tracking works by assigning a unique phone number to your paid ads. When someone sees your GVA or search ad and calls that number, the call is logged as a conversion.
We always suggest dealers do this to ensure they know how effective their campaigns are, resulting in data-backed decisions that save them time and money.
If you are serious about tracking how your ads affect your in-person sales, there are ways to do so. Offline conversion tracking allows you to match the original ad click all the way through to a sale recorded in your Customer Relationship Management system or your Dealer Management System.
The process works like this: when a customer submits an enquiry through your website, Google logs the click and assigns a unique identifier to the click. When that customer later purchases a vehicle, and the sale is logged in your system, you can import that data back into Google Ads. The platform then attributes the sale to the original ad, giving you a much cleaner read on your true ROAS.
Fifty enquiries from people who've been browsing casually for six months are worth less than five enquiries from buyers who are ready to purchase this week.
Lead quality matters, and it should be reflected in your reporting. Useful quality indicators include average time on site after clicking an ad, the specific vehicle detail pages they viewed, whether they engaged with a finance calculator, and the duration of any resulting phone calls.
High-volume, low-quality traffic is a warning sign that your targeting is too broad or your ad copy is attracting the wrong audience. For Google Vehicle Ads specifically, this can also point to issues with your vehicle feed. If your pricing or stock details aren't accurate, you'll attract clicks from people who've already decided the vehicle isn't right for them before they've even landed on your site.
We all love a good graph that shows impressive results, but it’s important that you don’t get blinded by vanity metrics.
Impressions tell you how many times your ad was shown. Sessions tell you how many people visited your site. Both are fine as context, but neither of them should be leading your performance conversations.
A report full of impressive-looking graphs and rising session numbers can mask a campaign that isn't generating a single worthwhile enquiry. Always push the conversation back to leads, calls, and cost per acquisition.
Here's something worth knowing about the vehicle buyer journey: it rarely starts and ends with a single click.
A buyer might see your Google Vehicle Ad, click through to a Vehicle Detail Page (VDP), leave, then come back a week later via a direct visit and call the dealership. Under last-click attribution, the ad gets no credit for that sale. But it absolutely played a role.
This doesn't mean last-click attribution is useless. It's simple and consistent, which makes it useful for spotting trends. But it's worth knowing its limitations and, where possible, looking at data-driven attribution in Google Ads, which distributes credit across the touchpoints involved in a conversion.
There are two types of benchmarking worth doing.
The first is against industry norms. Here at WeAdvertiseAnyCar, we see that the cost per lead typically ranges from £15 to £50, depending on vehicle type and local competition. CTRs for Google Vehicle Ads tend to outperform standard text ads by a meaningful margin, given the visual format and the pre-qualification that comes from showing price and images before the click.
The second benchmark is against your own historical data. Month-on-month and year-on-year comparisons are far more meaningful than generic industry figures, because they account for your specific market, stock, and pricing position. If your cost per lead was £28 last quarter and is now £42, that's a conversation worth having regardless of the industry average.
On a weekly basis, keep an eye on spending pacing (are you on track to use your budget effectively?), impression share, and cost per conversion. These are the early warning signals that something has shifted.
When the month has ended, that’s when you look deeper. Look at your cost per lead trend, conversion rate by campaign, lead quality indicators, and how your Google Vehicle Ads are performing at the vehicle category level. Monthly reviews are also the right time to make structural decisions, such as adjusting bids, updating your feed, pausing underperforming campaigns, or reallocating budget.
The key point about triggering a change: don't react to a single bad week. Make decisions based on trends. A conversion rate that dips for one week could just be normal variation. One that's declined for four consecutive weeks is a pattern that needs investigating.
Google Vehicle Ads require their own measurement lens, because the format works differently from standard search ads.
The primary metric to watch alongside cost per click is Vehicle Detail Page (VDP) engagement, which measures whether people are clicking through to specific vehicle pages, and what they do once they're there. Finance enquiry submissions and call actions from VDP pages are your key conversion signals for GVA.
You should also monitor your feed health. Disapproved listings, out-of-stock vehicles still showing all affect both ad performance and the quality of traffic you're receiving.
Impression share for GVA is worth tracking separately, too. If competitors are consistently outranking your stock in the carousel, that's a bidding or feed quality issue worth addressing.
If your current PPC reporting is built around clicks and traffic, it's time to raise the bar. The dealers who win at paid search are the ones who can trace every pound of ad spend back to a real enquiry or, better yet, a sold vehicle.
At WeAdvertiseAnyCar, we build our reporting around what actually matters to dealerships: leads, calls, cost per acquisition, and, where possible, offline sales matched back to ad activity. If you'd like to see what that looks like for your business, we’re happy to help you and guide you through your options. We’ve got flexible packages that suit a variety of dealerships and their needs.