Campaign Reporting and Analytics Checklist

Re-anchor reporting to the brief. Confirm the business challenge, the audience definition, and what the client expects to learn from this period's report. Mid-flight objective shifts are a common reason reports get rejected as off-target.

Lock the north-star metric and supporting KPIs (ROAS, CPA, CPM, VTR, CTR, brand lift). Pull the agreed benchmark from the SOW or from prior-period averages — do not improvise a benchmark mid-report.

Note the model in use (last-click, data-driven, position-based, MTA, MMM) and the click and view-through windows per platform. Inconsistent lookbacks across Meta, GA4, and DV360 are the most common source of conversion-count disputes.

Confirm whether geo holdout, ghost-ads, or platform-native lift studies are running this period and where the read will come from. If MMM is the source of truth, note when the next refresh lands.

Spot-check live placements against the UTM spec — source, medium, campaign, content, term. Manual buys (especially OOH QR codes and influencer links) are the usual offenders.

Use Tag Assistant, the Meta Pixel Helper, and GTM preview to confirm pageview and conversion events fire on key pages. Check that consent-gated tags fire only post-consent for EU and CCPA traffic.

Open a ticket with the trafficker or client-side ad ops describing the failing event, the page, and the platform. Hold the report build until tags are validated — reporting on a broken pixel is worse than reporting late.

Confirm Meta, Google Ads, DV360, TTD, LinkedIn, and TikTok connectors are syncing through the period end. OAuth tokens silently expiring mid-month is the most common data gap.

Match placement IDs and naming in CM360 against the approved Mediaocean plan. Mismatched naming downstream of trafficking is the source of most pacing-report mysteries.

Compare platform-reported spend to Prisma actuals. Variances over 2% should be investigated before reporting — common causes include in-flight optimizations not yet booked and cross-currency rounding.

Check viewability against MRC standards (50% pixels, 1 second display / 2 seconds video) and flag any inventory source above the IVT threshold defined in the IO. Programmatic open-exchange traffic is the usual flag.

Log pacing deviations, tracking gaps, brand-safety incidents, and any unresolved tag issues. The report's footnotes come from this log.

Loop in the trafficker, the planner, and the account lead. Brand-safety incidents and pixel outages need a written record before the client report goes out — surprises in the report are an account-management failure.

Run the period extract, confirm row counts vs. last period, and verify the dashboard date filter matches the report period. Off-by-one date filters are how a 31-day month becomes a 30-day report.

Compare period-over-period and against the SOW benchmark. Note channel-level deltas — paid social drift is usually the headline story for DTC clients.

Pull aided / unaided awareness, ad recall, and consideration deltas from the platform lift study or the Kantar / Upwave read. Reconcile against the strategy team's expected effect size before quoting in the deck.

Each insight pairs an observation with a so-what and a recommended next move. Avoid restating the dashboard — the client can read CPM trends themselves. Insights drive optimization decisions next period.

Fill the agency-branded deck against the data extract. Lock all numbers as values, not live links — clients should not see a #REF on open.

Three to five bullets: what happened against benchmark, the headline insight, and the recommended action. Write for a CMO who has 90 seconds to skim.

Strategist pressure-tests the insight; account lead pressure-tests the client-readiness. No report leaves the agency without both sign-offs.

Send the deck via the agreed channel (email, client portal, or status meeting). Include the raw data export as an appendix for the analyst-side counterpart.

Get the planner, buyer, and strategist in the room within a week of delivery. Below-benchmark performance compounds — a two-week lag in response is a quarter of a flight gone.

Document any reallocation across channels in a signed change order — even within a working media budget. Mediaocean revisions without paperwork are how reconciliation breaks at quarter-end.

Roll learnings into the forward forecast — adjusted CPMs, refined audience splits, revised conversion rates. Next month's report begins with this number.