Campaign Reporting on the Advertising Dashboard

  • Updated

The Demandbase Advertising dashboard reports on the performance of your company’s advertising investments. The visualizations, tables, and filters provide insight to metrics important in measuring account-based advertising campaigns. This includes traditional metrics like impressions and click-through rate (CTR), but also information about accounts visiting the website and accounts showing repeated interest in your site.

Tip: For a walk-through of the main campaign reporting features, see Navigating the Advertising Campaigns Dashboard (Video).

Open Advertising

To open Advertising, go to Advertising.png Advertising in the left navigation bar of Demandbase One.

Notice that the Advertising dashboard opens with Campaigns mode highlighted at the top right. In this mode, you can access many basic ad campaign reporting metrics along with data that helps you analyze campaign results with an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) perspective.

Baseline Filters

The top of the Advertising dashboard helps you focus on the campaign results that interest you. You can filter by the following parameters:

  • Date range of the campaigns that you want to analyze
  • Campaign status
    • All statuses
    • Watched by me (typically the campaigns that matter most to you and feed you frequent updates)
    • Active campaigns (campaigns in progress)
    • Pending campaigns (campaigns that were published but haven’t reached their start dates yet)
    • Paused campaigns (campaigns that were stopped temporarily so that the campaign team can review results, actualize, or edit the campaign before relaunching)
    • Draft campaigns (to help you find the campaigns that still need to be published)
    • Ended campaigns (campaigns that have used up allocated budgets or have reached the defined end dates)
    • Archived campaigns (campaigns that users deemed are no longer relevant)
  • Current or Lifetime Audience
    • Lifetime audience includes reporting on every account that was served at least one impression during the selected campaign(s) or is currently on the account list.
    • Current audience returns data for accounts on your list that are currently targeted by the selected campaign(s).
  • Labels applied to campaigns
    • Tip: Select multiple labels to find campaigns with any of the selected labels applied.

Filters.png

Advanced Filter

The Advertising dashboard includes a customizable filter that you can use to focus on activity with certain areas of your websites and ad campaigns. Click More in the top right to open the More Filters window, where you can indicate what web pages to include or exclude from ad campaign reporting. See Include or Exclude Web Pages in Campaign Reporting to learn more about using the inclusion/exclusion filter.

The filters that you save on the More Filters window appear as entries in the Saved filters drop-down list.

Summary Metrics

After applying baseline and advanced filters, you can use the dashboard on the Summary tab to view metrics about cost, ad impressions served, the lift percentage, and new targeted accounts engaging with your website. This information can help you identify trends that are important for your campaigns.

On the Summary tab, you can view some metrics reported as total numbers of either accounts or domains. Use the View by: drop-down list as illustrated in the following screenshot to toggle between accounts and domains.

Tip: The selection you make in the View by: drop-down list also impacts the information shown in the Domains tab quick cards. See Domains Tab for an overview of how data by accounts differs from data by domains.

Summary_Tab_View_By.png

The cards on top of the Summary tab summarize information about key activity around your campaigns: 

  • Spend is the total dollar amount of ad spend accumulated by your campaigns during the lifetime of the campaigns or during the period specified by the date range above. The Spend amount remains the same for both Accounts and Domains views.
  • Impressions is the total number of ad impressions delivered by the selected campaigns, either during campaign lifetime or during the date range chosen above. The Impressions total remains the same for both Accounts and Domains views.
  • Lifted quantifies the difference in engagement before and after an ad campaign to show what effects, if any, the campaign has among your targeted accounts. Specifically, Lifted is the percentage change between the average number of page views per day among targeted accounts during the date range selected on the Campaigns dashboard and the average for those accounts in the 30 days prior to the campaign launch. 
    • For example, if the targeted accounts had 30 views of a page on your website in the 30 days prior to campaign launch, the average number of page views is 1 per day. Let's say that you select to review activity for 1 week after you launch a campaign, and during that period there were 3 page views each day (an average of 3 per day). The corresponding Lifted card displays 200% because the average increased from 1 to 3.  
    • When Domains is selected in the View by: drop-down list, the percentage is calculated based on the numbers of domains with targeted accounts that received page views. 
  • New Accounts On Site toggles to a New Domains On Site card and vice versa, depending on the selection in the drop-down list.
    • When Accounts is selected, the number shows how many targeted accounts in matched domains that visited your website for the first time compared to the 30-day baseline prior to the launch of campaigns.
    • When Domains is selected, the number shows how many domains with accounts that are targeted by your campaigns came to visit your website compared to the 30-day baseline prior to the launch of campaigns.

In the Cumulative Performance section of the dashboard, you can view a snapshot of account reach and engagement during campaigns’ lifetime or by time range. You can toggle the dashboard view to display the following metrics by numbers of domains instead of accounts by using the View by: drop-down list.

  • Targeted: Total number of accounts that the selected campaigns target.
  • Reached: Number of accounts that received at least one ad impression from the selected campaigns.
  • Visited: Number of accounts that visited your website during the selected date range.
  • Clicked: Number of accounts that clicked an ad delivered by the selected campaigns.
  • Interacted: Number of accounts that met a threshold for significant website activity within the past 30 days. This could be defined as a number of sessions or number of page views. Hover over Interacted to view how your Admin defined this metric.

The visualization below the Cumulative Performance section shows the campaigns that ran during the selected date range. Each line represents a campaign and you can hover a campaign to see its start and end date.

Campaign_Visual.png

Define the Interacted Metric

Prerequisite

You must be an Admin of the Demandbase instance to define the Interacted metric.

Context

As an Admin, you can specify how the Interacted metric is calculated. Demandbase offers two options for this setting:

  • Page Views: Total number of pages that an account visited on your website.
  • Unique Sessions: Number of 2-hour windows during which a device associated with the account viewed your website. Multiple page views from the same device within the 2-hour window are counted as a single session. Page views from the same device beyond the 2-hour window will start a new session.

For example, let's say someone at an account does the following:

    • Opens your website at 9:00 AM on their laptop and visits another page on their laptop at 10:00 AM. Demandbase counts this as 1 unique session or 2 page views, depending on which user action defines the Interacted data.
    • The user then opens your website from their mobile phone at 10:30 AM. The Interacted metric count tallies either 1 new session or 1 additional page view. 
    • The user then goes on to visit another page on your website at 11:30 AM. Since this is outside of the 2-hour window for the previous session on their laptop, this is counted as 1 new session or 1 additional page view.

Steps

  1. Hover over the word Interacted on the Advertising dashboard until you see a pop-up window for defining the Interacted metric.
    Interacted_popup_window_with_Edit_link.png
  2. Click Edit Interacted Definition.
  3. (Optional) You can change the number of page views or unique sessions that serves as the threshold for an account to be tallied as Interacted. The default number is 3.
  4. Select Page Views or Unique Sessions in the drop-down list.
  5. Click Save.
    Edit_Interacted_definition_new_UI.png

Outcome

Your definition of the Interacted metric might require up to 24 hours to take effect on the Advertising dashboard for you and all other Demandbase users.

Other At-a-Glance Metrics

Next to the Summary tab, you can select either the Publishers or Creatives tabs to view an accumulation of campaign performance data with a different perspective.

Publishers tab: Here you can see where your ad impressions were served during the campaigns. The metrics on this tab include number of impressions, number of clicks, and click-through rate (CTR). By knowing which online publishers have higher or lower numbers of clicks and CTR for your campaigns, you might recognize patterns about how the content of web pages affects engagement with your ads. 

Publishers_Tab.png

Creatives tab: On this tab, you can view metrics about account engagement with campaigns related to Ad Groups or individual creatives. You can toggle between views and filter by creative type (display, video, or native). 

The metrics shown include ad spend, number of impressions, number of clicks, and CTR for all creatives associated with the selected campaigns. The start date metric indicates when the creative was first displayed in ad impressions. The last seen metric represents the latest date the creative was delivered in an impression.

For video creatives, you can also view metrics for quartile reporting. You can see the number of times and rate (number of times divided by impressions) that each video played at least 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% during impressions. The column for Video 25% plays (the number of times videos played at least 25%) displays by default in the table. To add the other options, click Edit Columns and select them.

Creatives Tab Updated.png

You can hover over the icon by the Ad Group or creative name to see more information. You can also access the Ad Group in the Creative Library or view a tear sheet for an individual creative. 

Creative Hover.png

Tips: On the Publishers and Creatives tabs you can do the following:

  • Click the magnifying glass icon to search for Publishers or Creatives by name.
  • Click to download the publisher or creative data reporting as a CSV file.

Focus on Specific Campaigns, Domains, and Accounts

In the lower part of the Advertising dashboard, you can hone in on specific campaigns and the domains corresponding to the accounts that are part of those campaigns. To learn more about how domains represent accounts in Advertising, see How Demandbase Targets Accounts Using Domains.

Campaigns Tab

The Campaigns tab offers a wide view of metrics for individual campaigns, including details about ad spend, account reach, and impressions for each campaign.

Campaigns_Tab.png

Controlling the View with the Campaigns Tab

Here are some important functions that the table and buttons of the Campaigns tab enable:

  • Dynamic control over high-level metrics: When you select the checkboxes of particular campaigns, data on the Summary, Publishers, Creatives, and Accounts tabs refresh to reflect the parameters of the selected campaigns.
  • Customize the view of metrics and other data: You can control what information appears on the Campaigns tab and export the data:
    • Click the magnifying glass icon above the campaign list to search for campaigns by name.
    • Click Export to download the publisher or creative reporting data as a CSV file.
    • Click Edit Columns at the bottom of the window to customize the display of table columns. In the Edit Column Fields to Display window that opens: 
      • Use the Select drop-down list and select columns to display to add a column. 
      • Click the minus icon to remove a column.
      • Click the lock icon to “freeze” a column. This forces the table to display the column on the left side regardless of scrolling actions.
      • Click on a column and drag it to the new location to rearrange the order of columns.

Adding Campaign Labels to Campaigns

Campaign labels allow you to associate metadata to campaigns so you can group them for performance reporting. For example, you can create labels for different business units, product lines, or quarters of the year. To apply labels to a campaign, hover over it in the Campaigns tab and click the plus icon.

Add_Labels.png

In the Label manager window that opens, you can do the following:

  • Create new labels to add to a campaign
  • Add existing labels to a campaign
  • Remove labels applied to a campaign

After you apply labels, you can use the Label baseline filter at the top of the Advertising dashboard to quickly find campaigns with specific labels applied. Campaign labels are public and available to all Demandbase Advertising users.

Single Campaign View 

When you click on a campaign name in the Campaigns tab table, the Campaign Details page opens where the quick cards, graphs, and table only report on that campaign. In addition, a snapshot of the campaign’s main settings, budget, and ad spend appears at top of the page.

Tip: When viewing a single campaign, the URL of the page can be shared and linked to as a convenient way to communicate or record the details of the campaign.

Here is how high-level metrics and other campaign information are rolled up at top of the Campaign Details page in single campaign view:

Performance_tab_Campaign_Details_page.png

The Campaign Details page opens to the Performance tab by default. If you click the Details tab or Edit Campaign button, you can make changes to the campaign configuration. See Change an Advertising Campaign for information about editing a published campaign.

Domains Tab

Important:

  • The Domains tab has replaced the Accounts tab, which appeared in earlier versions of the Advertising dashboard.
  • You must select Campaign Name checkboxes on the Campaigns tab of the dashboard to populate the Domains tab with relevant data for the specific campaign(s).

The top of the Domains tab shows key metrics of filtered, campaign-related activity using quick cards. The quick cards show metrics for accounts or domains depending on the selection made in the View by: drop-down list in the Summary tab above. Below the quick cards is a table with more detailed domain-related information about the selected campaigns.

Domains_Tab.png

The quick cards provide the following insights:

  • … reached: Number of targeted accounts or domains that received at least one ad impression from the campaign
  • Lifted …: Number of targeted accounts or domains that had more page views since the start of the campaign as compared to the 30-day period prior 
  • New … On Site: Number of new targeted accounts or domains that visited your website as compared to the 30-day period prior
  • … clicked: Number of accounts or domains that clicked on an ad of the selected campaigns

In the table of the Domains tab, advertisers can dig deeper to evaluate campaign delivery and performance, such as viewing detailed metrics of clicks and page views.

Your Account List and Domains

When you hover over a Domain name entry in the table, you’ll see the accounts that your campaigns are targeting and that map to the corresponding Domain listed in the row. The pop-up also shows the websites listed in the account records.

DB_popup_window_over_Domain_name.png

Advertising reports account-level engagement with your ads by the domains that accounts on your account list belong to. ABX reporting is done by each separate account that’s been established for a company, even if the websites associated with the accounts all resolve to the same domain.  

What this means is that sometimes campaign performance reported for a single domain on the Advertising dashboard reflects ad activity of multiple ABX accounts. Conversely, when you view campaign performance on the account level, multiple accounts can map to a single shared domain. Let’s illustrate this by an example:

  • The account Hampton Inn could list hamptoninn.com as the company’s website.
    • hamptoninn.com functions in a web browser but redirects to hilton.com. 
    • If Advertising detects that your ad is delivered to someone at an account associated with hamptoninn.com, the reported domain is hilton.com. 
  • Later your campaigns display ads to the following accounts:
    • Embassy Suites, which is associated with the website embassysuites.com
    • Homewood Suites, which is associated with the website homewoodsuites.com 
      • But the URLs of these two websites as listed in the accounts both redirect to different URLs that contain the domain hilton.com.
  • Simultaneously, your campaigns are targeting ads to the account Hilton Hotels, which is associated with the website hilton.com.
    • hilton.com doesn’t redirect. The domain is the same as the website on record for the account. 
  • Ad metrics for the users of all four accounts above are rolled up and displayed in the Domain name row for hilton.com.

Domain Mapping and Site Analytics

The accounts listed in the pop-up window when you hover over a Domain name don’t necessarily reflect all of your accounts in Demandbase that are associated with the domain. The pop-up window only lists the associated accounts that are in the account list for the campaign. If you go to the Site Analytics page, you might see page view activity by different accounts that map to the same domain. 

For example, let’s say you have an account named example1, which maps to the domain global.example.com. You run ad campaigns that don’t target example1. Instead, you run campaigns that target accounts called example2 and example3, which also map to the domain global.example.com. When you hover over the Domain name for the global.example.com domain, the pop-up window shows page views by the accounts example2 and example3. Site Analytics might show page views by the example1 account, but the Advertising dashboard doesn’t because example1 isn’t targeted by a campaign.

Tip: For a more detailed explanation of domain-to-account mapping in Advertising, see How Demandbase Targets Accounts Using Domains.

Controlling the View with the Domains Tab

In the table of the Domains tab, you can control the information that displays and export the data:

  • Click the magnifying glass icon above the table to search for domains by name.
  • Click Export to download the data as a CSV file. The file contains not only the domains and domain names, but also the accounts and websites associated with each domain. In addition, the data from other columns that are displayed in the Domains table are included.
  • Click Edit Columns at the bottom of the window to customize the display of table columns. In the Edit Column Fields to Display window that opens: 
    • Use the Select drop-down list and select columns to display to add a column. 
    • Click the minus icon to remove a column.
    • Click the lock icon to “freeze” a column. This forces the table to display the column on the left side regardless of scrolling actions.
    • Click on a column and drag it to the new location to rearrange the order of columns.

Was this article helpful?

3 out of 5 found this helpful