I don’t know what tasks eat up a lot of your time each week, but for me, it’s custom reporting. Much of it is fairly nuanced and can’t be automated.

While in some cases I could use labels, they don’t couldn’t always be leveraged for everything I needed. Also, I find filtering by label to be annoying in both Google Ads and Bing.  If you have a large number of labels in your account, you can’t always easily find the label you had selected without having to either click “Load More” or entering part of it in the search box. Then, to change labels, you have to deselect the first one and then search for the next one. Even if I remove the label filter and start over, both platforms still remember which label was previously selected and I have to go back in deselect the first one anyway.

Here are my workarounds.

Saving and Scheduling Google Ads Reports

One easy workaround for this in Google Ads is via Report Editor, where you can save your reports for anyone with account access to view. If you’ve found Report Editor cumbersome to navigate or have struggled to get the report you want, there is a workaround. In the interface, simply create the view you want to save, then click download and select “Open in Report Editor.”

Now, depending on what you’re looking at, you might find your report in Report Editor or you might strike out.

If you select “Go Back,” you can instead choose to schedule the report to be emailed instead. Click “Download” again and go down to “Schedule” this time.

If you have a set time frame, such as This Month or Past 7 days, getting the report emailed to you might work for your needs. If you ever need to change the report or settings, you can do so in the Reports section of Google Ads.

If you’re like me and changing the timeframe every week based on the launch dates of the ad test, I’m afraid you’re out of luck since that’s not one of the fields that can be edited. All you can do is select “Create Similar” and then change the timeframes. This may or may not save you time versing creating the report you need from scratch each week.

Bing Ads Saved Campaign Reports

In Bing Ads, create your required reporting metrics as needed using labels, filters, etc. When you select “Download” in Bing Ads, you’ll see a similar drop-down as to what you saw in Google Ads.

You also have the option to email and schedule the same report.

The difference between the two is that if you only save the report, it will only run once. If you schedule it, then you’ll receive it via email at your selected scheduled interval.

To see all of your reports, visit the new “Saved Campaign Reports” section on the left toolbar in Bing.

Here, you can see both types of reports referenced above.

Here is where Bing Ads has an edge over Google Ads: you can change the date ranges without having to create a similar report!

Unfortunately, you can’t put in future dates (which would be something I’d really appreciate for sure!).

Final Thoughts

Creating reports can save you time and ensure accuracy in your reports since you might not always remember which filters, columns, etc you used when you pulled data previously.

Additionally, being able to schedule and send the reports to others on your team when you’re out of the office helps eliminate any confusion on reporting parameters and helps simplify the process since the reports are sent directly to their inbox.

If you are regularly sending a report to a client, you can also schedule a report to be sent to them directly.

How have saved reports helped you? Comment below to share your thoughts and experiences!