In 2019, we asked PPC marketers how long it took them to spot a performance issue and figure out why it happened. Only ⅓ of respondents said they could complete their investigation by the next day.

Seven years on, how much has really changed? Many PPC teams are still stuck in spreadsheets and struggling to keep up.

While that routine may be familiar, we think there’s a better way. Join us to explore PPC performance monitoring options and how well they work.

What is PPC performance monitoring?

PPC performance monitoring means tracking and analyzing PPC ad metrics, like conversions, CPA, and ROAS. It’s also known as KPI monitoring.

It has three components:

• Detecting anomalies, like a sudden performance drop
• Root cause analysis to understand what happened
• Goal tracking to keep track of progress

Together, they help PPC teams address performance issues and act on new opportunities.

What are your options?

Many advertisers use more than one tool, combining platform data, automated analysis, and PPC know-how. From completely manual to fully automated, here are the current options:

Spreadsheets

Cost: Free (Google Sheets)
Pros: Free, familiar, flexible
Cons: Most time-consuming, slow reaction time as a result, no alerts
Best for: Solo marketers, small accounts, occasional manual reviews

Scripts

Cost: Free
Pros: Automated checks, no manual exports, customizable
Cons: Technical know-how needed, troubleshooting and maintenance is time-consuming, run time must be under 30 minutes, which limits how many scripts you can have
Best for: Teams with technical resources who want custom automation

Automated Google rules

Cost: Free
Pros: Easy to set up, useful for simple actions
Cons: Limited logic, no rolling average, or percentage changes
Best for: Simple account safeguards, basic budget control

Native platform insights (Google Ads/Microsoft Ads)

Cost: Free
Pros: Built into Google Ads / Microsoft Ads, real-time data, quick summaries
Cons: Limited customization, siloed by platform, recommendations not independent
Best for: Advertisers who mainly work in one platform and want basic guidance

AI assistants (ChatGPT, Gemini & Claude)

Cost: Free or paid plans
Pros: Natural-language queries, fast summaries
Cons: No continuous monitoring without integrations, requires human review, not always accurate
Best for: Fast analysis, report summaries, ad-hoc decision support

Third-party software (like Adalysis)

Cost: Paid plans
Pros: Dedicated KPI monitoring, alerts, cross-account visibility, advanced diagnostics
Cons: Subscription cost
Best for: Teams managing multiple or larger accounts who need faster reaction times, scalable KPI monitoring, and deeper oversight

What should you look for?

When people talk about AI tools, they quite often mean automation in general. For performance monitoring, this distinction is important. There are three current trends in the evolution of tracking tools:

Deterministic vs probabilistic

AI assistants are probabilistic systems, whereas third-party systems like Adalysis are deterministic. This has implications for accuracy. Here’s an example:

Deterministic: If CPA rises above £50, send an alert
Probabilistic: This issue is likely caused by declining CTR

If you need to double-check performance monitoring outcomes, then you won’t save much time. This is a crucial choice to get right.

Conversational queries

AI assistants support natural-language queries, so you can have a conversation about your performance data. This is a big draw, but it’s only worthwhile if the responses are accurate.

Missing context is a big issue, as this analysis from Google Ads Advisor shows. Google diagnosed a drop in conversions as the potential result of a budget and target change in one campaign. However, there are four affected campaigns, and the real cause was a conversion tracking issue.

While conversation is clearly the direction many tools are headed, it’s still at too early a stage to create substantial savings. This shouldn’t be prioritized yet.

Built-in diagnosis

Automated alerts and dashboards are all very well and good. But if you have to dive back into the spreadsheets to understand what’s happening, then you’ll lose your time savings fast. This is why an accurate and fast method for root cause analysis is essential.

Ease of use

Testing the user interface and workflow in each tool is still important. Consider how long the setup will take and how much time it’ll save your team now. Then think six months ahead and how you can QA and update your monitoring as your accounts evolve.

What you get with Adalysis

Performance monitoring is a core feature of the Adalysis platform. Here are the outcomes we can help you achieve:

Never miss an issue or opportunity

All new accounts start with six customizable performance monitors for core KPIs like conversions, CPA, and ROAS. Additional prebuilt templates make onboarding very fast.

At the same time, you have complete flexibility to build what you need: threshold and percentage changes, multiple conditions, and priority levels.

You can choose from in-app alerts, email, and Slack notifications.

See your root causes at a glance

Get visual flowcharts of all factors affecting performance. Prefilled with relevant criteria from your current view or alert, it makes it easy to see what’s going on.

Fine-tune the filters or drill down from campaign to ad group and keyword level.

Find hidden opportunities faster

See at a glance your account or campaign’s potential to scale. Quickly assess if you’re losing impression share due to budget or rank, and factor in search impression position. Or use impression-weighted quality score analysis to prioritize where your time will have the most impact.

Keep track of progress automatically

Performance goal tracking means you can quickly see if you’re on or off track based on MTD progress. It’s like a burndown chart for your PPC targets, with optional alerts.

Prioritize your work easily

A multi-account view gives you a complete overview of all your team’s accounts. This means you can quickly prioritize what needs your attention first.

Edit all monitors for all accounts in one go

Choose which accounts to update whenever you save a new setting. A global template even lets you save monitors for accounts that don’t exist in Adalysis yet.

This is a deterministic workflow, so you never need to worry about hallucinations or if AI has the correct context for your analysis.

What setup looks like in practice

Here are some examples of what a performance monitoring workflow can look like in Adalysis:

PPC agencies

A busy client roster means the team is fully booked. The team lead has his or her work cut out on the QA front, and there’s limited experience or time for script development.

Step 1: Set the baseline

The team decides on the global monitors that apply to all accounts. This ensures consistency and reduces setup at the account level.

Step 2: Add account specifics

The PPC account managers enter account goals and adapt alert thresholds as needed. This guarantees the right alert and no false alarms.

It can make sense to group accounts with similar requirements, as you can save updates to multiple accounts at the same time, without affecting your global settings.

Step 3: Assign ownership and escalation paths

The team agrees who should receive alert notifications and who is responsible for acting on them. This helps them avoid unneeded messages while ensuring control and speed of response.

Step 4: Keep cross-account oversight

The team leadership can use a single overview to spot which accounts need attention first, as well as recurring issues and resourcing pressure points. PPC account managers can drill down into alert details, with automated visual flowcharts to speed up investigation.

In-house PPC managers

Brand teams are under pressure to meet lead targets and efficiently manage all account details.

Step 1: Start with the big picture trends

When working deep in an account, it can be hard to keep track of the big picture trends. This is where performance monitors can act as an early warning system, so the PPC manager or team can dive into strategy or in-depth analysis.

Step 2: Track your business targets

Consider what performance data needs to be shared within your business on a regular basis and the most regular questions you receive. Automating tracking cuts reporting, meeting prep, and response times.

Step 3: Fine-tune your setup

Performance monitors and goals can be set up at the account, campaign, and campaign type levels. Adalysis also supports setup by campaign name, label, or tag.

This means you can differentiate between brand vs non-brand, country/regional alerts, or Search vs PMax/Shopping.

Wrap-up

As Google Ads gets more automated, independent monitoring matters even more.

PPC managers’ workload is shifting from execution to creating relevant guardrails for Google Ads and its AI. Without a robust system in place, simply crunching the data is slow and time-consuming.

If you’d like to put Adalysis to the test, we offer a free 30-day trial. We’re also happy to answer any questions you have via the comments or over a call.