Google Ads Invalid Activity: Credit Report Insights

Digital Phablet has introduced a new guide in the Google Ads support section titled “About the Invalid Activity Credit Report.” It’s unclear whether this report is entirely new or if only the documentation is recent, but either way, advertisers should regularly review this report.

This report provides insight into the credits allocated for invalid clicks identified by Google AdSense.

The Invalid Activity Credit Report is accessible for both Search and Performance Max campaigns.

The support document explains:

Google Ads integrates advanced automated systems to shield your campaigns from invalid traffic and non-compliant ad placements. While many of these defenses work in real-time to protect your campaigns and prevent billing for invalid activity, some activity is flagged after an invoice is issued. When appropriate, credits are issued to advertisers for these invalid activities. These credits are reflected as line-item adjustments within your billing and transaction history. The Invalid Activity Credit Report breaks down these credits by campaign and network, also listing the number of clicks and interactions associated with the credits. This helps you understand how invalid activity may have affected your campaign performance. By offering a transparent view of your net performance after credits, these reports support more accurate campaign optimization and provide greater insight into Google’s protective measures.

Benefits of this report include:

• Seeing performance metrics after the billing cycle: Obtain a detailed view of your adjusted costs, clicks, interactions, and other measures after invalid traffic and credits are deducted during the billing period.
• Minimizing manual adjustments: Eliminate the need to manually match credits with specific campaigns to assess performance.
• Enhanced transparency: Clearly understand how Google’s ongoing invalid activity protections are safeguarding your campaign expenditures.

To access this report:

• Navigate to the Report Editor within the Campaigns menu, indicated by the Campaigns icon.
• Under the “Template gallery” section, select the Invalid Activity Credit Report for Search & PMax campaigns.
• The report will display standard campaign performance metrics, along with new columns labeled “credited clicks,” “credited interactions,” and “credited amount.” Users can also customize by adding more performance metrics, including “adjusted” metrics that account for credited activity.
• To save your configuration, click on Save or Save As. The latter allows you to create a new version of the report with a different name.

The following image demonstrates what the report looks like:

Further details are available in the detailed help documentation.

Additional insights can be found in discussions within industry forums and communities.