My best Excel PivotTables start with these 4 functions
Applying XLOOKUP, IF, TEXTSPLIT, and TRIM to my source data gives my PivotTable more useful fields and cleaner info to work with.
John Cox
Blogs · @wyome
Tagged pivot tables · everything
7 useful Excel formulas and functions for PPC
A practitioner-oriented walkthrough of seven Excel techniques for PPC analysts, split into "101" basics (delta calculations, incremental impact, CONCATENATE) and "201" dataset-prep skills (VLOOKUP, converting dates to custom week groupings, text-based categorization with nested IFs, and joining granular multi-attribute datasets). The core argument is that mastering spreadsheet mechanics — not just campaign intuition — is what lets analysts spot high-impact optimizations and build credible performance narratives, since surface-level metric changes can hide larger underlying deltas. Worth keeping as a reference for the actual formulas and step-by-step examples rather than general advice.