Automated reporting, a must-have

Automated reporting, a must-have

One in two marketers believes that the increasing sophistication and volume of data can be a barrier to achieving their objectives. You'd think that the more data there is to exploit, the better the performance. In reality, however, it's not quite so obvious, especially at the key reporting stage, when you have to compile different types of data from different sources.

However, automated reporting solutions do exist, enabling data from media campaigns to be centralized and processed. The aim is to put an end to end-of-campaign excelsis where, barring a miracle, it's virtually impossible to process all the data from the various platforms properly, let alone compare them with each other.

What is automated reporting?

An automated report is directly connected to the data sources it needs to process, so in the context of a digital media campaign, it will be connected to the various distribution platforms. Its second role is to use models to consolidate data, so that it can be reprocessed in a coherent way.

In fact, one of the first challenges we face in aggregating data is that not all Ad Platforms have the same way of structuring their data, which makes standardization imperative.

This flattening out of the ways of calling a target, a location or an affinity is crucial in order to have correspondences and thus be able to put information on the same footing. To do this, we need to develop a very specific language, an ontology, a sort of Tower of Babel for data, enabling it to be standardized.

Finally, representation, i.e. the way in which information is put into perspective, is also important, and is often achieved using a "data visualization" solution.

What added value?

An automated report therefore uses a suite of technologies to automate the collection, processing and representation of data in order to generate holistic, interactive reports that enable both macro and micro analysis of a media device.

This type of report allows us to be more efficient, as it manages the collection of different types of information for the people in charge of reports, avoiding them having to connect to individual platforms in order to generate and then extract reports. What used to be done manually is now totally automated.

Using this type of technology also means greater responsiveness. This is because information is captured and processed almost instantaneously, making it available almost in real time. This gives you greater leeway for the optimization that follows.

The number of errors is reduced to zero, as there's no longer any question of generating reports by means of tedious "copy, paste" operations, carried out by a traffic manager who surely has better things to do.

Better performance

Surely the most significant added value is the improvement in campaign performance because the optimization of distribution is no longer done platform by platform but in a holistic manner. More concretely, it is the use of an ontology, a common language allowing data to be put on the same footing, which makes it possible to make comparable what was not previously comparable. This technology thus makes it possible to lead to a global reflection where a budget can be transferred from one platform to another on the basis of reliable information.

Indeed, it is now possible to know the equivalence of targeting or even of one location from one Ad Platform to another. As this type of comparison is not possible with a standard way of managing reports, this provides a decisive advantage in identifying areas for optimization and intervention on performance.

The famous granularity

Finally, granularity is now there despite significant volumes of data previously unprocessed. It is possible to carry out detailed analyzes and take advantage of more advanced strategies and therefore expect a better return on media investment.

Just like the automation of campaign configuration, automated reporting is part of an approach to seeking efficiency and improving performance.

The implementation of this type of system invariably provides significant advantages compared to standard methods. This is why we integrate this type of system directly into our campaign management interface, The Programmatic Platform. Once your campaign is launched, you can view the entire performance of your media device in real time via an interactive interface.