Google Ads Invalid Activity Credit Report - New Help Document

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Barry Schwartz / Executive Editor

Google added a new help document to the Google Ads help documentation section named About the Invalid Activity Credit Report. I am not sure if the report is new, or if it is just that the help document is new - but either way, this is a report advertisers should be looking at frequently enough.

This report helps advertisers see the credits they get over invalid clicks from Google AdSense.

The invalid Activity Credit Report is available for Search and Performance Max campaigns.

The help document says:

Google Ads employs sophisticated automated defenses to protect your campaigns from invalid traffic, and from serving in placements that violate Google’s AdSense Program policies. While most of these defenses are applied in real-time to protect advertiser campaigns and prevent them from being billed for associated traffic, some activity is identified after an invoice has been issued. Invalid activity credits are issued for associated advertiser spend, where appropriate and possible.

While credits for invalid activity are also reported as line-item adjustments in your billing and transaction history, the Invalid Activity Credit Report breaks these credits down by campaign and network. The report also includes the number of clicks and interactions associated with the credits, allowing you to track how this activity impacted your campaign performance. By providing a clear view of your "net" performance after credits are applied, these reports enable more accurate optimization and offer enhanced transparency into Google’s protection measures.

Here are the benefits from this report:

• View performance after the billing period: Get a precise view of your adjusted cost, adjusted clicks, adjusted interactions, and more after all invalid traffic and invalid activity credits applied during the billing period to-date have been subtracted.
• Reduce manual reconciliation: Eliminate the need to manually reconcile credits back to specific campaigns to determine performance.
• Increased transparency: Understand exactly how Google’s ongoing invalid activity protections directly safeguard your specific campaign spend.

You can access the report through:

• Go to Report Editor within the Campaigns menu Campaigns Icon.
• Under the ”Template gallery” section, select Invalid Activity Credit Report: Search & PMax. The report will populate the standard set of campaign performance metrics, new “credited clicks”, “credited interactions”, and “credited amount” columns. Users can drag and drop additional performance metrics (including “adjusted” metrics that subtract credited clicks, interactions, and cost) as they see fit.
• To save your report, select Save or Save as. “Save as” lets you create a copy of your report with a new name.

Here is what it looks like:

For more details check out this new help document.

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