Google last month published a dedicated help document for the Invalid Activity Credit Report in Google Ads, providing the first comprehensive public explanation of how the report works, what metrics it surfaces, and how advertisers can access it. The document covers Search and Performance Max campaigns and introduces a set of new adjusted performance metrics designed to give advertisers a cleaner view of what they actually paid for after credits for invalid traffic are applied.

The development was first noted on June 1, 2026, by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable, who reported that Google had added the help page to its Google Ads Help documentation. Whether the report itself is new or simply newly documented remains unclear. What is clear is that the existence of a formal help document now gives advertisers a structured reference for understanding a credit mechanism that has existed in billing records but has rarely been explained at the campaign level.

What the Invalid Activity Credit Report covers

According to Google, the Invalid Activity Credit Report breaks credits for invalid activity down by campaign and by network. Previous billing reports included invalid traffic credits only as line-item adjustments. The new help document describes how the report goes further, connecting those credits to the specific campaigns and ad networks that generated the questionable traffic, and quantifying the clicks and interactions associated with the credits.

According to Google's help documentation, invalid activity includes two distinct categories. The first is invalid traffic - clicks and interactions on ads that are not the result of genuine user interest, including intentionally fraudulent traffic and accidental or duplicate clicks. The second is ad interactions later determined to have occurred on inventory that violates Google's AdSense Program policies.

The distinction matters. Advertisers are typically focused on fraudulent or bot-driven clicks, but policy-violating placements represent a separate category of exposure. An ad served on a site that subsequently fails an AdSense policy review can generate credits retroactively, potentially weeks after the billing period has closed.

A layered, two-stage protection system

Google describes its approach to invalid activity protection as a "sophisticated, layered" system. Most protections operate in real time, filtering out invalid traffic before an invoice is generated. But some invalid activity is identified only after billing has concluded. It is this second category - post-invoice detection - that the Invalid Activity Credit Report addresses directly.

According to the documentation, the report tracks two separate stages:

  • Invalid activity detected and filtered before the invoice is finalised
  • Invalid activity detected after the invoice is finalised, for which credits are issued

The timing of this detection creates a structural mismatch that Google acknowledges in the documentation. Certain clicks or interactions may occur just before the billing cycle closes but are identified as invalid immediately after. In those cases, the original click is attributed to the month in which it occurred, while the credit is applied to the following month. This means a campaign's performance metrics for one month and the corresponding credits may appear in different reporting periods.

Additionally, the documentation notes that minor discrepancies may occasionally arise due to the rounding of monthly credit totals. These are typically at the minimum billable unit and do not significantly affect overall reporting accuracy or the total credit amount issued.

Ten new metrics in the report

The report introduces ten distinct metrics, all available as columns in the Report Editor. They fall into two groups: credit metrics and adjusted metrics.

The three credit metrics quantify what was detected after billing:

Credited clicks refers to the number of clicks for which an advertiser received an invalid activity credit after the billing period ended. Credited interactions covers the same logic for non-click ad engagements. Credited amount is the monetary value credited back to the advertiser for invalid activity detected after the billing period ended.

The seven adjusted metrics subtract credited activity from standard performance figures to produce a net view of what the advertiser actually paid for:

Adjusted cost is the invoiced campaign cost minus the invalid activity credit. Adjusted clicks subtracts credited clicks from total clicks. Adjusted interactions does the same for total interactions. Adjusted CTR recalculates clickthrough rate using adjusted clicks against impressions - this figure may be lower than the initially reported CTR if invalid clicks were detected after the billing period. Adjusted average CPC divides total spend by adjusted clicks, and may read higher than the standard average CPC if fraudulent clicks inflated the denominator. Adjusted conversion rate shows how often an ad led to a conversion based on adjusted interactions, excluding invalid clicks for a cleaner performance signal. Finally, adjusted cost per conversion calculates average conversion cost using adjusted spend and conversions, excluding costs attributable to invalid activity detected post-billing.

Together, these ten metrics give advertisers a before-and-after view of campaign performance. The unadjusted figures remain in the report, so the delta between standard and adjusted numbers directly quantifies the post-billing credit activity.

How to access the report

The Invalid Activity Credit Report lives in the Report Editor, accessible through the Campaigns menu within Google Ads. According to Google's documentation, advertisers can find it under the "Template gallery" section, where it is listed as "Invalid Activity Credit Report: Search & PMax."

Once loaded, the report populates with the standard set of campaign performance metrics alongside the new credited clicks, credited interactions, and credited amount columns. Users can drag and drop additional performance metrics, including the full set of adjusted metrics, into the report view as needed. Reports can be saved under existing names or duplicated with a new name using the "Save as" function.

The report is currently available only for Search and Performance Max campaigns. Other campaign types, including Display, Video, and Demand Gen, are not covered.

Why this report matters for advertisers

The practical value of this report lies in its ability to reduce manual reconciliation work. Previously, advertisers who wanted to understand the true cost of a campaign after invalid traffic adjustments had to cross-reference billing records against campaign-level performance data - a process that could involve multiple exports and spreadsheet calculations. The Invalid Activity Credit Report automates that reconciliation at the campaign and network level.

The report also addresses a transparency gap that has been a recurring theme across Google's advertising products in recent years. Performance Max transparency has been a persistent area of advertiser concern, with major reporting enhancements introduced in April 2025 after long-standing criticism about the campaign type's "black box" nature. The Invalid Activity Credit Report extends that transparency push to the specific question of how much invalid traffic has affected a campaign's metrics and budget.

For Search campaigns, the report provides campaign-level visibility into a protection mechanism that has existed for years but was largely invisible in standard reporting. Advertisers running high-spend Search campaigns - particularly those targeting competitive keywords where rival click activity is a known concern - now have a structured tool for quantifying the credits they receive and the performance impact of the underlying invalid traffic.

For Performance Max, the report adds another data layer to what has become a rapidly expanding transparency stack. Google has progressively added reporting capabilities to Performance Max throughout 2025, including channel-level performance data, full search terms reporting, and network segmentation in asset reports. The Invalid Activity Credit Report addresses a distinct but related question: not just where the budget went, but how much of it was credited back due to invalid activity on those networks.

Context: invalid traffic across the digital advertising ecosystem

Invalid traffic is a systemic problem across digital advertising, not one specific to Google. Industry anti-fraud efforts saved advertisers an estimated $10.8 billion in US display and video advertising channels in 2023, according to a study published in October 2024 by the Trustworthy Accountability Group, the 4A's, the Association of National Advertisers, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Without those programs, the report estimated that the invalid traffic rate for all US display and video advertising would have reached approximately 9.96% in 2023.

The picture is notably worse in certain channels. Social media platforms carried elevated invalid traffic rates in 2024, according to Pixalate's May 2024 Global Social Media Invalid Traffic Benchmarks Report, which analysed 1.4 billion open programmatic ad transactions between March and May 2024. Programmatic supply chains present their own challenges: 25% of programmatic traffic failed supply chain object validation checks in Q4 2023, with failing traffic showing a 64% higher invalid traffic rate compared to validated supply paths.

A March 2025 investigation into bot traffic documented systemic failures in bot detection across the broader digital advertising ecosystem, with losses running into billions. Against that backdrop, the Invalid Activity Credit Report represents a relatively narrow but practically useful instrument - giving advertisers a transparent view of what one specific platform has already caught and compensated.

The report connects to a longer pattern of billing and transparency improvements at Google. A January 2026 help document published for the Google Ads billing report similarly addressed invalid traffic credits, noting that advertisers may see more than one line for invalid traffic credits when credits correspond to different months of service. The Invalid Activity Credit Report goes further, adding the campaign-level and network-level granularity that the billing report does not provide.

Investigation requests remain available

For advertisers who believe they are experiencing invalid click problems that fall outside the automated detection system, Google's help documentation references the Click Quality Form as the mechanism for requesting an investigation. The scenarios cited include issues with invalid clicks, poor quality form submissions, clicks outside of location targeting, and sudden short-term cost increases.

The existence of this form is not new. What is notable is that Google has positioned it within the same help document as the Invalid Activity Credit Report, signalling that the automated credit system and the manual investigation process are intended to work as complementary layers of protection rather than alternatives. Not all invalid activity results in automatic credits; the help documentation is explicit that credits are issued "where appropriate and possible."

Scope and limitations

The report currently covers Search and Performance Max campaigns. This is a meaningful constraint. Advertisers running significant budget through Display, YouTube, Demand Gen, or App campaigns will not find invalid activity credit data broken down at the campaign level through this report. Whether Google intends to extend the report to other campaign types is not addressed in the documentation.

The month-end timing mismatch is also worth flagging for anyone building budget reconciliation workflows around this data. Because post-billing detection can push credits into a subsequent month, a clean month-on-month analysis of adjusted cost requires awareness of which billing period the credits belong to, even when the underlying invalid activity occurred in the prior period.

Rounding at the minimum billable unit introduces another small source of discrepancy. Google's documentation describes these as minor and notes they do not significantly affect overall accuracy, but they are relevant for advertisers who expect the sum of credited amounts to reconcile precisely with billing statement totals.

For Performance Max campaigns specifically, data availability for new reporting features introduced during 2025 was limited by collection start dates. The documentation for the Invalid Activity Credit Report does not specify any similar limitation, but advertisers working with historical data should verify the extent of credit data available for periods prior to the report's documentation date.

Timeline

  • April 2022 - The Media Rating Council updates its Invalid Traffic (IVT) Detection and Filtration Standards to modernise the 2015 guidelines, expanding coverage of invalid traffic threats across online advertising. PPC Land coverage
  • March - May 2024 - Pixalate analyses 1.4 billion open programmatic ad transactions and publishes the May 2024 Global Social Media Invalid Traffic Benchmarks Report, documenting elevated IVT rates across TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms. PPC Land coverage
  • Q4 2023 (published February 2024) - Pixalate's Q4 SupplyChain Object Validation Report finds 25% of programmatic traffic failing validation checks, with failing traffic carrying a 64% higher IVT rate. PPC Land coverage
  • June 2024 - Google suspends credit and debit card billing for a specific group of Google Ads advertisers, pushing those accounts toward monthly invoicing or direct debit. PPC Land coverage
  • October 9, 2024 - TAG, 4A's, ANA, and IAB publish research showing industry anti-fraud efforts saved advertisers $10.8 billion in US display and video channels in 2023. PPC Land coverage
  • March 2025 - Adalytics publishes a report documenting systemic failures in bot detection across the digital advertising ecosystem. PPC Land coverage
  • April 30, 2025 - Google announces major transparency improvements for Performance Max campaigns, including channel-level performance data and full search terms reporting. PPC Land coverage
  • September 30, 2025 - Google adds network segmentation to Performance Max asset reports, allowing advertisers to track individual asset performance across six channels. PPC Land coverage
  • January 26, 2026 - Google publishes a help document for the Google Ads billing report, including references to invalid traffic credits as line items across billing periods. PPC Land coverage
  • June 1, 2026 - Google adds a help document for the Invalid Activity Credit Report, covering Search and Performance Max campaigns with ten new credited and adjusted metrics. First reported by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable.

Summary

Who: Google and Google Ads advertisers running Search and Performance Max campaigns.

What: Google published a help document for the Invalid Activity Credit Report, a report in the Google Ads Report Editor that breaks down credits for invalid traffic and policy-violating inventory by campaign and network. The documentation introduces ten new metrics - three credit metrics (credited clicks, credited interactions, credited amount) and seven adjusted metrics (adjusted cost, adjusted clicks, adjusted interactions, adjusted CTR, adjusted average CPC, adjusted conversion rate, adjusted cost per conversion) - that together show the net campaign performance after post-billing invalid activity credits are applied.

When: The help document was published on June 1, 2026, as first reported by Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable.

Where: The report is accessible through the Report Editor within the Campaigns menu in Google Ads, under the Template gallery section. It is available to advertisers globally running Search and Performance Max campaigns.

Why: Google's automated defences detect invalid traffic in two stages: in real time before an invoice is generated, and after billing has closed. The second stage generates credits that have historically appeared only as line items in billing records. The Invalid Activity Credit Report gives those credits a campaign-level and network-level breakdown, reducing manual reconciliation work and providing greater visibility into how post-billing invalid activity protections affect specific campaign performance metrics.