Agency reporting dashboards: Safe to steer by?

Can your agency’s reporting dashboard be trusted? Would you know if it wasn’t providing accurate campaign insights? Alexandra Paschalidou highlights some of the risks and limitations associated with taking all those dials and gauges at face value.

The collection, analysis and reporting of data are essential for understanding media campaign performance, preventing cost overruns and gaining insights for decision making. Many media agencies now offer clients a reporting dashboard that — in principle — provides summarised insights into the performance of their online and offline campaigns. Obviously, though, these dashboards are only as good as the information they present: if the reporting isn’t accurate, it can lead you to misunderstand what’s really happening out there, possibly leading to sub-optimal decisions.

What can a properly functioning reporting dashboard do for your brand?

Reporting dashboards are powerful tools that can help you achieve the following:

• Measure the number of people who view or click an advertisement and go on to complete a purchase
• Monitor the actual spend to assess whether your budget is being used effectively
• Measure the profitability of your campaigns
• Assess whether campaigns stay within budget, while at the same time achieving their stated objectives.

Reporting dashboards may be included as part of the fees agreed between the advertiser and the agency, or they may be charged separately as an additional service.

Can reporting dashboards be trusted?

One of our recently completed audits revealed several issues with the reporting dashboard provided by the media agency to track and report on the performance of our client’s digital campaigns.

… we identified inconsistencies between the data presented in the dashboard and the original digital platform reports, which we consider to be an objective and reliable third-party source of data.

The dashboard claimed to provide real-time performance metrics to the client. However, we identified inconsistencies between the data presented in the dashboard and the original digital platform reports, which we consider to be an objective and reliable third-party source of data. These reports track a campaign from start to finish and contain data about the performance of the campaign e.g. clicks, impressions and the actual media cost incurred.

Although agency reporting dashboards are perceived as gathering, organising and reporting information automatically, our audit uncovered that significant manual input was required to keep them updated. Specifically, data was collected manually from several sources, including Excel spreadsheets from publishers where direct deals had been negotiated, before being incorporated into the dashboard.

This meant that the information reported was not real-time, creating a lag between the marketing activity and the reporting of it. That’s a key finding: dashboard-derived insights can be time-sensitive and you, as advertiser, may expect that their data is all instantaneously reported — and make decisions accordingly — when, in fact, it is not. As long as the brand team understands the limitations of the reporting, which in this case it did, then there are unlikely to be any negative consequences arising from reporting latency alone.

More worryingly, we found that not only was information not timely, it was also prone to inaccuracy. The agency recognised this and had informed the client. Their remedy was to send an email every month with the correct information. Hence at the end of every month, while the client knew what the correct information was, the dashboard picture wasn’t entirely accurate. The client then needed to use a second data source alongside the dashboard to get a full picture of what was happening on its campaigns. To our way of thinking, this rather eroded the value of the reporting dashboard.

Fortunately for our client, the agency was open and honest about the limitations in the reporting dashboard. But is that always the case? And in any event, how many brand teams have the time to question and interrogate the reporting dashboard? It’s much easier simply to accept at face value that dashboard data is both timely and accurate.

What is the impact of an inaccurate reporting dashboard?

Transparency is essential between advertiser and agency. If the data is coming from multiple sources, is not all real time and/or requires manual intervention to populate the dashboard (which would significantly increase the risk of error), then you might not seize upon potential limitations in the data you’re viewing and, consequently, fail to take it into account when interpreting the dashboard’s output. This can lead to sub-optimal decisions being made and, in some cases, inappropriate ones.

For example, advertisers will want to know promptly whether a campaign is underperforming and, if optimisation has not had the desired impact, reallocate that budget to a campaign that’s performing better. Media is, after all, an investment in order to drive sales and you’re looking for a return on it.

And of course, when you’re paying for a service, you expect the information to be “legit”; if not, it raises concerns about the real value you’re getting from such tools. If not addressed promptly, this can lead to the client-agency relationship becoming strained.

How Financial Progression can help

It’s increasingly important to have an independent external review of your agency’s reporting dashboard to confirm that the information it presents is both timely and accurate.
Whether as part of our industry-leading marketing compliance audit, or as a standalone exercise, we will verify the accuracy of the reported data against its sources. We will work with your agency to identify areas of manual input, as these will need additional scrutiny. This will highlight opportunities for automation, saving you both time and money.
Our comprehensive approach will help you strengthen the relationship between you and your agency, fostering transparency and trust.

If you have any concerns about the accuracy of your reporting dashboard or simply want to ensure you are getting from your media agency what you’ve paid for, don’t hesitate to contact us.