A campaign report has five or six numbers on it. Two of them matter, the rest are context, and the useful information is in how they relate to each other.

The numbers

Impressions — times the ad was served and rendered. This is what a sponsor bought.

Viewable impressions — of those, how many were actually on screen long enough to be seen. The industry standard is 50% of pixels for one second. If this is well below impressions, the slot is in a bad position.

Clicks — times someone clicked through.

CTR — clicks divided by impressions. For a relevant direct sponsorship, 0.3–1.0% is normal. Below 0.1% something is wrong. Above 2% is suspicious — check for accidental clicks from a slot too close to a button.

Unique visitors / frequency — how many distinct people saw it, and how many times each. Frequency above 8 means you are showing the same ad to the same people repeatedly and the later impressions are worth little.

Conversions — actions on the sponsor's site attributed to a click. This is the number that decides renewal.

The three combinations worth knowing

High impressions, low viewability. The slot is being served but not seen — below the fold, or in a sidebar that mobile readers never reach. Move the placement up. Do not sell this slot on impressions until you fix it.

Good viewability, low CTR. People see it and do not care. Either the creative is weak or the advertiser is a poor fit for the audience. Ask the sponsor for a second creative before concluding the audience is wrong — a surprising share of bad CTR is a bad banner.

Good CTR, no conversions. The ad works and the landing page does not. This is the sponsor's problem, not yours, and saying so plainly is one of the more valuable things you can do for them. Check where the clicks land: sponsors frequently point ads at a homepage instead of the product.

What to actually send

Not a dashboard export. Four lines and a sentence:

March, below-header slot
19,400 impressions · 121 clicks · 0.62% CTR · 6 orders attributed

>

CTR held steady all month. The six orders came within two days of the click, which suggests people are buying on the first visit rather than researching. Want to keep the slot for April?

The sentence is the part they remember. It shows you looked at the data rather than forwarding it.

Numbers to be careful with

Comparing CTR across positions. A mid-content slot will always beat a footer. Comparing them tells you about position, not about the advertiser.

Comparing CTR across months if frequency changed. More impressions to the same people always lowers CTR. A drop from 0.7% to 0.5% while impressions doubled is not a decline in performance.

Conversion counts on small numbers. Six orders versus four is noise. Do not let a sponsor draw conclusions from single-digit differences, and say so before they do.

Impressions from your own visits. Check that your own traffic is excluded, or a month of you loading your own homepage shows up as reach.

Report before they ask

Send something mid-flight, unprompted. A sponsor who has heard nothing for a month assumes the worst, and the first report they see arrives loaded with three weeks of accumulated doubt.

A short mid-flight note — even one saying it is tracking normally — makes the final report a conversation about renewal rather than a verdict.