VIEW DESCRIPTION - CATEGORIES
A comprehensive category performance report integrating data from key sources: Google Analytics 4, Google Ads Shopping campaigns, and Meta Ads Shopping campaigns. The report aggregates product-level data to provide category-level insights, enabling strategic decision-making across your categories - product portfolio. By default, data is sorted by Google Analytics Net Revenue and displays the last 30 days of data, with customisable date ranges.
The report includes key performance indicators such as:
Category-level Google Analytics conversion metrics (aggregated views, add-to-carts, checkout initiations)
Consolidated advertising campaign metrics (impressions, clicks, costs, ROAS) broken down by platform
Aggregated metrics from all connected advertising systems at the category level
Category efficiency indicators: conversion rates, CTR, ROAS, and COS
Applied conditional formatting (highest values highlighted in green) facilitates quick identification of best and worst-performing categories and potential areas requiring advertising budget optimisation.
TIME RANGE OF DATA
The report is created based on the last 30 days counted from yesterday.
DATA VIEW CONCLUSIONS:
Analyze your best-performing categories using your preferred metric. By default, the table is sorted by Google Analytics Revenue, but you can change the sorting to find categories with the highest impressions, clicks, or other metrics.
Review revenue and cost inconsistencies at the category level using conditional formatting. The highest values are highlighted in green, so if you notice color differences between revenue and costs for a category, it may indicate that you're either under-investing or over-investing in that category.
Verify if your bestselling categories have impressions across all ad sources by comparing Revenue and Impressions across advertising platforms. For example, if your top categories don't have impressions in Meta Ads, this indicates you need to improve your campaign segmentation and increase ad spend for these categories in Meta Shopping Campaigns.
Compare Click-Through Rates (CTR = Clicks/Impressions) across advertising platforms to identify categories with high consumer interest. A higher CTR indicates stronger market demand, as more users actively click on the category ads when they appear in search results or feeds.
Evaluate the correlation between ad spend and revenue (ROAS / COS) to identify categories where increased advertising investment might yield higher returns, based on historical performance patterns.
Analyze the conversion rate by comparing view_item to add_to_cart events (ADD TO CART CR) in Google Analytics to identify category-specific drop-off points in the purchase funnel.
Use the Purchase Quantity metric to identify high-value categories that might benefit from increased promotional focus or special campaign strategies.
Monitor the cost-to-revenue ratio (COS) broken down by categories to identify which ones generate the highest margin on advertising spend and where there's room for optimization.
Track Add to Cart CR trends for individual categories to understand which ones have the best product-market fit and scaling potential.
Product File:
Product Category - Product category.
Product Id - Product variant identification number.
Product Name - Product name.
Google Analytics 4:
Item Views - Number of view_item events from Google Analytics.
Add to Cart - Number of add_to_cart events from Google Analytics.
Checkouts - Number of begin_checkout events from Google Analytics.
Add to Cart CR - Ratio of add_to_cart events to view_item events from Google Analytics.
Purchase Quantity - Total quantity of products in purchase events from Google Analytics.
Net Revenue - Total net revenue value (excluding tax and shipping costs) from purchase events in Google Analytics.
Google Ads Shopping Campaigns:
Impressions - Number of product impressions from shopping campaigns in Google Ads.
Clicks - Number of product clicks from shopping campaigns in Google Ads.
Click Through Rate - Percentage ratio of clicks to impressions from shopping campaigns in Google Ads.
Net Costs - Total net cost value from shopping campaigns in Google Ads.
Conversions - Number of product conversions from shopping campaigns in Google Ads. Only main conversions that are campaign objectives are counted.
Net Conversion Value - Total net conversion value from shopping campaigns in Google Ads. Only the value of main conversions that are campaign objectives is counted.
ROAS - Ratio of net conversion value to net costs from shopping campaigns in Google Ads (Net Conversion Value / Net Costs).
COS - Ratio of net costs to net conversion value from shopping campaigns in Google Ads (Net Costs / Net Conversion Value).
Meta Ads Shopping Campaigns:
Impressions - Number of product impressions from shopping campaigns in Meta Ads.
Clicks - Number of product clicks from shopping campaigns in Meta Ads.
Click Through Rate - Percentage ratio of clicks to impressions from shopping campaigns in Meta Ads.
Net Costs - Total net cost value from shopping campaigns in Meta Ads.
Totals:
Total Impressions - Total number of product impressions from shopping campaigns across all advertising systems connected to the DataOctopus application. For example, if you have Google Ads, Meta Ads, and Bing Ads connected to DataOctopus, and a product received 1 impression from Google Ads, 1 from Meta Ads, and 1 from Bing Ads, the total impressions will be 3 (sum from all sources).
Total Clicks - Total number of product clicks from shopping campaigns across all advertising systems connected to the DataOctopus application. For example, if you have Google Ads, Meta Ads, and Bing Ads connected to DataOctopus, and a product received 1 click from Google Ads, 1 from Meta Ads, and 1 from Bing Ads, the total clicks will be 3 (sum from all sources).
Total Click Through Rate - Percentage ratio of clicks to impressions from shopping campaigns across all advertising systems connected to the DataOctopus application.
Total Net Costs - Total net cost value from shopping campaigns across all advertising systems connected to the DataOctopus application. For example, if you have Google Ads, Meta Ads, and Bing Ads connected to DataOctopus, and a product generated costs of 1 PLN from Google Ads, 1 PLN from Meta Ads, and 1 PLN from Bing Ads, the total net costs will be 3 PLN (sum from all sources).
ROAS - Ratio of net revenue from Google Analytics to total net costs from shopping campaigns across all advertising systems connected to the DataOctopus application (Net Revenue / Total Net Costs).
COS - Ratio of total net costs from shopping campaigns across all advertising systems connected to the DataOctopus application to net revenue from Google Analytics (Total Net Costs / Net Revenue).