Hello,
I am trying to get a sum of budget allocated to campaigns in Google Ads. The data is correct on each row (1 campaign = 1 budget)
However the total returns an incorrect sum.
Any idea why ?
Many thanks
The grand total doesn’t compute a basic arithmetic sum - it runs another query against the data source.
So if the values are double-counted, then the total will look lower.
Example
Consider this basic example table of purchases:
| User | Product |
|---|---|
| Sam | Blue T-Shirt |
| Sam | Green Hoodie |
| Cyril | Blue T-Shirt |
Now, if you looked at a table of user counts grouped by product purchase, you might get something like this:
| Product | User count |
|---|---|
| Blue T-Shirt | 2 |
| Green Hoodie | 1 |
Should the total number of users be 3? After all, 2+1=3. But there are only two users, Sam and Cyril. The “problem” is that Sam is double-counted in the table because he bought a blue shirt and a green hoodie. If you asked Looker Studio to generate a grand total for this table, it would run a separate query finding all of the users, without grouping on any products. Thus it would return 2.
I suspect something similar is happening in your table. Could there be double-counting happening among your budgets? Is the 87 number perhaps more correct than you initially thought?
Workaround
Unfortunately, there’s no way to get Looker Studio to show a “simple” total in the grand total row. If you want to get that, you’d need to create a separate column, maybe one with a running total.