With a fluctuation monitor, you can track a percentage increase or decrease for your chosen metric. You can choose between the following lookback and comparison time frames:
Time frame to look at | Corresponding time frames you can compare with |
Yesterday |
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Last 7 days |
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Last 30 days |
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Last 60 days |
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Last 90 days |
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Get started with our templates in the gallery
The fastest way to create a fluctuation monitor is to pick one of the templates from our gallery by clicking the "+Add monitors" button and then "Create from gallery."
This will load our templates as shown in the animation below:
Right now, the following fluctuation templates are available in our gallery:
Massive drop in account impressions. If yesterday's account-level impressions were at least 90% lower yesterday than the same day the week before.
Massive drop in account conversions. If yesterday's account-level conversions were at least 90% lower yesterday than the same day the week before.
Massive drop in account conv. value. If yesterday's account-level conversion value was at least 90% lower yesterday than the same day the week before.
30% change in account-level conversions in the last 7 days. Compared to the 7-day average of the 3 previous weeks.
30% change in account-level cost in the last 7 days. Compared to the 7-day average of the 3 previous weeks.
Branded CPC increase. If the Avg. CPC increased by at least 30% for campaigns containing "brand" in their name in the last 7 days. Compared to the 7-day average of the 3 previous weeks.
Massive drop in Shopping campaign impressions. If yesterday's impressions in standard Shopping campaigns were at least 90% lower than the same day the week before.
Massive drop in Performance Max campaign impressions. If yesterday's impressions in Performance Max campaigns were at least 90% lower than the same day the week before.
When you open one of the templates above, you can see and adjust all the settings to make it your own.
Create a fluctuation alert from scratch
1. Select accounts and campaigns
The first step is selecting which account(s) and/or campaign(s) you want to monitor. This could be all accounts linked to TrueClicks, one campaign in one account, and everything in between.
Selection 1: Run for accounts
All accounts (Google Ads)
Selected accounts (Google Ads)
All accounts (Microsoft Advertising)
Selected accounts (Microsoft Advertising)
Choosing "All accounts" skips the manual account selection and moves straight to the "Monitor" selection. This means the monitor will run for all accounts linked to TrueClicks.
Choosing "Selected accounts" will let you choose your accounts manually, as you can see below.
Selection 2: Select accounts
If you chose "Selected accounts" in the previous step, you must manually choose one or more accounts you want to monitor. There's a search box on top to help you quickly find the right account(s):
Selection 3: Monitor
Account(s) (individual): monitors performance at the account level.
Campaign(s) (individual): monitors performance at the campaign level, which can be based on their type (e.g., search, shopping, display, pmax) or name (e.g., name contains or does not contain a value you enter). If you create a monitor for just one account, you can even select individual campaigns within that account.
Accounts (aggregated): combines and weighs data to collectively monitor performance for multiple accounts. Multiple accounts are treated as if they were one account.
Campaigns (aggregated): combines and weighs data to collectively monitor performance for multiple campaigns. Multiple campaigns are treated as if they were one campaign.
Selection 4: Run for campaigns
This option only appears if 'Campaigns' has been selected in the previous step. You can choose from these four methods to select the campaigns you want to include in this monitor.
All campaigns: monitor all campaigns within your account selection.
Selected campaigns: choose your campaigns manually. This option is only available if you have selected just one account in step 2.
Campaign type: select a campaign type to monitor. All campaigns with that type will automatically become part of the monitor.
For Google Ads, you can pick one of the following campaign types:
Discovery
Display
Hotel
Local
Local services
App
Performance Max
Search
Shopping
Smart
Video
For Microsoft Advertising, you can pick one of the following campaign types:
Shopping
Audience
Dynamic search
Search and content
Name contains: enter a value the campaign names should contain (e.g., "branded"). This only works in accounts with consistent and non-overlapping naming conventions. So it wouldn't work if you call branded campaigns "branded" and generic campaigns "non-branded" as both contain the word "branded," making it a useless filter.
Name doesn't contain: enter a value the campaign names should not contain. Again, this only works with a consistent and non-overlapping naming convention.
2. Date rage
Select the time frame you want TrueClicks to check daily. For example, if you pick "Last 30 days", then every day, we'll look at the data from the last 30 days.
Yesterday
Last 7 days
Last 30 days
Last 60 days
Last 90 days
After setting the date range, choose your metric(s) to monitor. Please see the table at the top of this page for an overview of the time frames TrueClicks can compare with.
3. Fluctuations to monitor
Choose a metric to monitor and set the fluctuation for which you want to receive alerts. You can choose any value between 10% and 100% with 10% increments and pick to alert for only increases, only decreases, or both.
For each metric, we have a corresponding default minimum volume filter to prevent generating alerts for low-volume campaigns or accounts. You probably don't want to receive an alert for a campaign that saw impressions increase from 20 to 30 a week, even though it's a 50% increase.
Metric | Minimum volume filters |
Impressions | 1,000 impressions |
Clicks | 100 clicks |
Cost | 100 clicks |
Conversions | 10 conversions |
Conv. value | 10 conversions |
CTR | 100 clicks |
Avg. CPC | 100 clicks |
Avg. CPM | 1,000 impressions |
Impr. (Top) % | 1,000 impressions |
Impr. (Abs. Top) % | 1,000 impressions |
Avg. CPV (Video only) | 1,000 impressions (video only) |
Views (Video only) | 1,000 impressions (video only) |
View rate (Video only) | 1,000 impressions (video only) |
Cost / conv. | 10 conversions |
Conv. rate | 10 conversions |
Conv. value / cost | 10 conversions |
Search impr. share | 1,000 impressions |
Search lost IS (rank) | 1,000 impressions |
Search lost IS (budget) | 1,000 impressions |
Add fluctuation metric
If you want, you can track multiple metrics with one monitor. This is useful if multiple metrics are closely related and you don't want to create separate monitors for each.
Select a severity level
Not every fluctuation is equally urgent. That's why we allow you to pick a severity level for each monitor, so you'll quickly see which alerts need immediate attention and which can wait. You can easily adjust this later on.
You can also set different priorities based on how much a metric deviates from your set threshold or fluctuation.
The idea is simple: the bigger the difference, the higher the priority you should give it, making sure you address the most important issues first. Example:
4. Additional setting
Name
Try to summarize all your settings in the name so it's clear what you're monitoring to everyone (including your later self).
We recommend the following naming convention for fluctuations:
{xx}% decrease/increase/change in {metric} in {account/campaign desciption} - {time frame} vs. {time frame you compare with}
For example:
50% decrease in conversions in Sterling Cooper branded campaigns - Yesterday vs. same day previous week.
Email notifications
By default, "Users with My Accounts" are selected to receive email notifications. This means that if an account is involved that someone has selected as "My account", that person will automatically receive an email alert. Another good reason to make sure everyone has their my accounts selection complete.
Next to users with my accounts, you can add email addresses manually in the input field below. This is great for:
People who don't have access to TrueClicks but should still receive an email.
Forwarding the email notification to Microsoft Teams or Slack.
Alternatively (but not recommended), you can select:
None
Selected TrueClicks users
Every TrueClicks user
Conversion Reporting Delay
Google and Microsoft Ads often have incomplete conversion data for recent time frames (like yesterday). Because of these delays, comparing very recent data can be unreliable and, if this delay isn't taken into account, likely to trigger alerts too early.
To fix this, our 'Conversion Reporting Delay' custom attribute lets you set the number of days it typically takes for conversion data to be fully complete and appear accurately in your Ads reports.
How to Use the Conversion Reporting Delay Attribute
Navigate to Custom Attributes.
Go to the Additional section.
Enter the number of days required for your conversion data to fully update in the Conversion Reporting Delay field.
Next step: Create a threshold monitor