The calculator warns that my clicks are higher than my impressions: did I copy the report wrong?

Three usual reasons for the warning

• Clicks were copied from the campaign total, while impressions came from a single ad set or a single ad inside it.
• The periods differ: clicks for the last 30 days and impressions for the last 7, because the date filter changed between two exports.
• Reach was pasted where impressions belong, or a figure was taken from the neighbouring column of a wide table that is hard to follow on a phone.

Example: what a wrong number breaks, and what survives

Say you entered 800 impressions, 950 clicks, a spend of 300 and 12 orders. CTR comes out at 118.75%, which is impossible, CPM at 375, and the clicks warning appears. Back in the report, you find that 800 was the impressions of one ad, and the whole campaign was shown 38,000 times.

That is a useful clue. CPC, CPA and conversion rate never use impressions, so the mistake could not touch them. A wrong impressions figure spoils exactly two metrics, CTR and CPM. A wrong clicks figure would spoil three at once: CTR, CPC and conversion rate. So when a group of metrics looks strange and the rest look sensible, look for the field they share. That field is usually where the error sits.

Fixing the inputs step by step

1. In the platform report, pick one level only: campaign, ad set or ad. Do not mix them.
2. Lock the date range, then copy impressions, clicks, spend and conversions from the same row.
3. Check that the column you copied is impressions and not reach.
4. Enter the figures in the Campaign performance calculator. The warning disappears once clicks are equal to or lower than impressions.

Why the calculator does not fix the number for you

Because it cannot know which of the two figures is wrong. Quietly lowering the clicks would hide the problem and hand you a plausible-looking result built on a number that was never in your report. So it calculates with what you typed and shows the warning beside the results. If you press 'Copy result', the warning text is copied along with the metrics, so it travels with the numbers when you send them to a partner or a manager.

If figures from different campaigns keep getting mixed up, give each campaign's links their own parameters with the UTM campaign link builder, so the ad report and your store analytics line up without guesswork. When you want the return on spend, move on to the ROAS calculator.