How the dashboard metrics are calculated
On this page
Every tile on the dashboard's Overview tab has a sub-line under its value. The sub-line is the tile's definition: what is counted and, for a ratio, what is divided by what.
How it works
The dashboard shows two kinds of numbers:
- Tapper-tracked: clicks and blocks, counted through the monitoring script on your site and the tracking template Tapper sets on your account.
- Ad-platform reported: spend, cost per click, conversions, cost per acquisition and ROAS, from your connected ad accounts.
Blocked visitors are counted once a day; clicks count clicks. A visitor who clicked five times in a day and was blocked adds five to Total Clicks and one to Total Blocked. Their invalid clicks are what Valid Clicks, Invalid Traffic % and Reallocated Spend work from. No multiplier is applied anywhere.
Money on the dashboard is in US dollars. Tapper converts each ad account's spend at the monthly exchange rate, so accounts that bill in different currencies add up in one currency. Each month uses that month's rate, or the closest month's rate when a currency has none for it. An account with no currency on record, or whose currency has no rate at all, is left out of the spend totals and Avg CPC. Its invalid clicks still count in Reallocated Spend, priced at that platform's average cost per click that day from your other accounts, or noted as unpriced when none of them has dollar spend. Spend, 30 days is the exception: one tile per currency.
The tiles follow the date range and filters at the top of the page (a card that ignores a filter shows a chip), except Spend, 30 days and Spend and customers, which show their own dates in their chip. The data updates every 4 hours. See Dashboard filters, date ranges and time zone.
Traffic & protection
| Tile | Sub-line on screen | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| Total Clicks | "All on connected ad accounts", or a split into Connected, Unmatched and Acted on | Ad clicks Tapper recorded through its own tracking, for the platforms and dates you selected. Connected clicks are on ad accounts you connected; Tapper judges these, and they are the base of Invalid Traffic %. Unmatched clicks are not matched to a connected ad account and are checked but not acted on. Acted on appears only when your script acts on unmatched clicks. |
| Valid Clicks | "Connected clicks minus invalid clicks" | Clicks on your connected ad accounts that Tapper did not flag as invalid. |
| IP-Blocked Visitors | "On an excluded IP, counted once a day" | Visitors whose IP address was excluded, counted once for each day. |
| Audience Blocks | "{N} also blocked by IP" | Visitors excluded through an audience, counted once for each day. The sub-line says how many of them were also on an excluded IP. |
| Total Blocked | "Visitors from IP or Audience, once a day" | Every blocked visitor once a day, however they were blocked. A visitor blocked by both IP and audience on the same day counts once, so Total Blocked can be lower than IP-Blocked Visitors plus Audience Blocks. A visitor blocked on two days counts on each. |
| Invalid Traffic % | "Invalid clicks ÷ connected clicks" | Invalid clicks divided by the clicks on your connected ad accounts. Invalid clicks are a part of connected clicks. |
| Reallocated Spend | "Invalid clicks × their account's daily CPC" | An estimate in US dollars: each invalid click is priced at its own ad account's average CPC that day, or at the platform's when that account has no priced spend that day, and the prices are summed. See Reallocated spend: how your savings are estimated. |
Invalid Traffic % is the share of your connected clicks that Tapper flagged as invalid, not a measure of how well blocking works. A visitor who clicked many times adds each of those clicks. The rate varies with industry, traffic volume, seasonality and competition, so compare it with your own earlier periods.
Spend & conversions
| Tile | Sub-line on screen | What it counts |
|---|---|---|
| Total Spend | none | What your connected ad accounts report as spent in the selected dates, in US dollars. |
| Spend, 30 days | "{N}% vs previous 30 days" | Ad spend over the last 30 full days, to yesterday, whatever dates are picked. Each currency is its own tile; currencies are never added together. |
| Avg CPC | "Spend / {N} ad clicks" or "Spend / ad-platform clicks" | Spend divided by the clicks the ad platform counted, not by Total Clicks. |
| Conversions | "Ad-platform reported" | Conversions as your ad platforms report them. |
| Conversion % | "Ad-platform reported / hard-outcome clicks" | Ad-platform conversions divided by the ad platform's own clicks. Ad platforms can credit more than one conversion to a click, so this rate can go above 100%. |
| Avg CPA | "Spend / Ad-platform reported conversions" | Spend divided by ad-platform conversions. |
| ROAS | "Revenue / Spend, connected accounts" | Revenue reported by your connected accounts divided by their spend. Shows a dash (-) when the accounts report no revenue. |
The Lift tiles
Below these, the Lift group shows Recovered spend, Open recommendations, Impact and related tiles: Lift's own estimates, never added to Reallocated Spend. For an online store, Spend and customers follows: Google purchases, new customer CPA, returning share and MER, over the last 28 days. See Lift on the dashboard.
Tiles on the other tabs
- Invalid traffic: Reading the Invalid traffic tab.
- Conversions and Geography: The Conversions and Geography tabs. Conversion events there is Tapper's own conversion count, not a second count of ad-platform conversions.
- Mobile: The Mobile dashboard tab: installs, sessions and tracking tool metrics.
Charts that split blocks by block reason count a visitor blocked for more than one reason under each, so their bars can add up to more than Total Blocked. The campaign type chart counts each visitor once a day, under the campaign type of their first block, so with no filters its bars match Total Blocked.
When the workspace is monitor-only
Nothing is blocked, so the tiles are renamed. The formulas stay the same.
| Blocking label | Monitor-only label |
|---|---|
| Total Blocked | Total Invalid |
| IP-Blocked Visitors | IP-Flagged Visitors, sub-line "IP flagged, not applied, once a day" |
| Audience Blocks | Invalid Audience Exclusion Users |
| Reallocated Spend | Wasted Spend, shown in red |
See Monitor-only: why nothing is blocked yet and what changes when blocking starts.
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