Ad Clicks
Also known as: Clicks, Paid Clicks, Paid Media Clicks, PPC Clicks, Link Clicks
Ad Clicks counts clicks on paid ads as reported by the ad platforms (Google Ads, Meta Ads, Microsoft Ads), net of invalid clicks. It is the volume base for CTR, CPC and paid conversion rate.
Business Use Case
1️⃣ Paid search team: brand campaign clicks fall >20% week over week → check budget caps, bids and disapproved ads.,2️⃣ Performance marketing: clicks flatten while spend rises → move budget to ad groups with a lower cost per click.,3️⃣ Marketing ops: platform clicks exceed GA4 paid sessions by >30% → audit auto-tagging (gclid, fbclid) and landing pages.
Business Criticality
High
Journey / Navigation Area
Discovery
Owning Function
Marketing
Scope
Global
Formula
Calculation Notes
1️⃣ Source of truth is the platform Clicks field (Google Ads metrics.clicks, Microsoft Ads Clicks); for Meta use Link Clicks, not Clicks (all).,2️⃣ Paid placements only: search, shopping, display, video, social, Performance Max. Organic, email and on-site promotion clicks are excluded.,3️⃣ Invalid clicks the platform filters are excluded; reload the trailing 3 days daily because platforms restate them after the fact.,4️⃣ Bucket by click date in the ad account's time zone; do not re-bucket to UTC or the ad-platform totals will not tie out.,5️⃣ Dedupe on account, campaign, ad group and date before summing, so reloads and overlapping exports never double count.,6️⃣ Clicks exceed GA4 paid sessions (tag not yet fired, consent denied, repeat clicks in one session); report the gap, never force a match.
Technical Details
Events
SQL Queries
Google Analytics 4 (BigQuery)
-- ==========================================
-- 1. GOOGLE BIGQUERY SQL
-- ==========================================
DECLARE start_date DATE DEFAULT DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 90 DAY);
DECLARE end_date DATE DEFAULT DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE(), INTERVAL 1 DAY);
WITH deduped AS (
-- Paid-placement performance rows in account time zone, one row per platform x account x campaign x ad group x date (latest load wins)
SELECT
platform,
click_date,
clicks,
link_clicks
FROM `your-project.ads.ad_platform_performance_daily`
WHERE click_date BETWEEN start_date AND end_date
AND placement_type IN ('SEARCH', 'SHOPPING', 'DISPLAY', 'VIDEO', 'SOCIAL', 'PERFORMANCE_MAX')
QUALIFY ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
PARTITION BY platform, account_id, campaign_id, ad_group_id, click_date
ORDER BY loaded_at DESC
) = 1
)
-- Daily ad clicks: platform Clicks (Meta: Link Clicks); these fields are already net of platform-filtered invalid clicks
SELECT
click_date,
SUM(IF(platform = 'meta_ads', link_clicks, clicks)) AS ad_clicks
FROM deduped
GROUP BY click_date
ORDER BY click_date;Adobe Experience Platform (AEP Query Service)
-- ==========================================
-- 2. ADOBE AEP QUERY SERVICE SQL
-- ==========================================
WITH params AS (
-- Relative reporting window
SELECT
DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE, 90) AS start_date,
DATE_SUB(CURRENT_DATE, 1) AS end_date
),
ranked AS (
-- Paid-placement performance rows in account time zone, ranked per platform x account x campaign x ad group x date (latest load first)
SELECT
a.platform,
a.click_date,
a.clicks,
a.link_clicks,
ROW_NUMBER() OVER (
PARTITION BY a.platform, a.account_id, a.campaign_id, a.ad_group_id, a.click_date
ORDER BY a.loaded_at DESC
) AS rn
FROM aep_backend_dataset_ad_platform_performance_daily AS a
CROSS JOIN params AS p
WHERE a.click_date BETWEEN p.start_date AND p.end_date
AND a.placement_type IN ('SEARCH', 'SHOPPING', 'DISPLAY', 'VIDEO', 'SOCIAL', 'PERFORMANCE_MAX')
)
-- Daily ad clicks: platform Clicks (Meta: Link Clicks); these fields are already net of platform-filtered invalid clicks
SELECT
click_date,
SUM(CASE WHEN platform = 'meta_ads' THEN link_clicks ELSE clicks END) AS ad_clicks
FROM ranked
WHERE rn = 1
GROUP BY click_date
ORDER BY click_date;Source Data
Ad Platform Backend (Google Ads / Meta Ads / Microsoft Ads performance tables)
Dependencies
Prerequisite: List the dependencies required for this Metric
Dimensions:
Report Attributes
Ad Platform Campaign Ad Group / Ad Set Ad Network Type Device Keyword Date
Recommended Reporting Views
Segment Eligibility
false
Governance
Derived KPIs
Governance
GitHub
catalog/metrics/ad-clicks.yml