What Good Media Reporting Looks Like (And What to Ask For)

What does good media reporting look like?

Good reporting gives you clarity, not clutter. It links results to your campaign goals, turns data into recommendations, and helps non-specialists understand performance. It should be regular, and you should have platform access to see the data when you need it.

Specifically, a strong report delivers:

• Alignment with your goals, so every metric supports a business outcome.
• Actionable insights, with patterns, opportunities and next steps rather than raw numbers.
• Clear structure by audience, creative, channel and funnel stage.
• Regular delivery plus on-demand platform access.

What are the most common reporting mistakes?

• Too much data and no takeaway. Important insights get buried.
• Relying only on CTR and impressions. These surface metrics miss conversions and business outcomes.
• No breakdown by creative or audience. Without it you cannot see what to optimise.
• Reporting by platform, not strategy. Structure around objectives and journey stages instead.
• Data with no analysis, and no recommendations. Stakeholders are left asking "so what?"
• Comparing platforms rather than outcomes. Judge each channel by its role in reaching your goals.

Avoiding these makes a report useful for decisions, not just record-keeping.

How should a strong media report be structured?

1. Executive summary. One page of key insights against KPIs, with wins, challenges and top-level ROI.
2. Campaign overview. Objectives, audience, budget, timeline and approach, with relevant market context.
3. Performance by channel. Paid search, social, display and video compared on efficiency and contribution, including optimisations made.
4. Performance by audience. Which segments responded, which delivered the most value and which underperformed.
5. Creative insights. Results by format, placement, message and A/B test.
6. Funnel summary and recommendations. The journey from awareness to conversion, attribution insights and clear next steps.

Two sections deserve extra attention because they drive optimisation.

Creative-level reporting compares individual assets such as images, videos, headlines and calls to action. Look at view-through and click-through rates by creative type, for example static versus animated, long versus short, and emotional versus rational. Watch frequency and freshness too. Signs of engagement decay or slowing conversion velocity point to creative fatigue, while unusually strong results are worth scaling.

Audience-level reporting compares CPA, conversion rate and engagement across interest or intent groups, lookalike sources and retargeting depth. Use it to move budget toward the segments with the best return on ad spend.

Which metrics should you expect by channel?

Each channel has its own core measures. Expect these in your reporting:

Look at how these metrics work together to move people from awareness to conversion, rather than reading each in isolation.

How should you lay out a funnel-based report?

Organise results by customer journey stage so the report matches your goals.

• Awareness: CPM, reach, frequency and VTR. These show how efficiently you reach new people.
• Consideration: CTR, page engagement and bounce rate. Time on page and scroll depth also help.
• Conversion: CPA, ROAS and lead or sign-up volume. These are the bottom-line results.

Good funnel reporting makes bottlenecks visible. If reach is healthy but engagement is weak, the problem is probably creative or targeting, not budget.

Use consistent tracking methods across all channels so the stages are comparable. Segment further by platform, device, NZ region and ad format, and combine dimensions where useful, for example mobile performance by region.

How do you set up attribution and tracking correctly?

Accurate measurement depends on a few settings.

• Attribution windows. Choose 1-day, 7-day or 28-day windows to suit your sales cycle. Short windows fit quick purchases and longer ones fit considered buying.
• View-through as well as click-through. View-through shows influence without a click, and helps assess upper-funnel impact.
• Offline conversions. Import them into Google Ads using GCLID or Customer Match, covering calls, store visits and CRM-tracked sales.
• Branded versus non-branded. Separate them so branded search does not overstate the return on prospecting.
• Multi-touch models. Compare data-driven, position-based and linear models, not just last-click.

Consistent UTM tagging underpins all of this. Tag every ad with campaign, source, medium and content parameters, check them against GA4 traffic sources, and keep a central document of your naming taxonomy.

Should you use dashboards or PDF reports?

Use both, depending on the audience and the decision.

Consider your audience's comfort with data. Common NZ tools include Looker Studio, GA4, Meta Ads Manager, DV360 with Campaign Manager, and the Adform and The Trade Desk dashboards.

Budget and pacing reports are a useful add-on. They show daily, weekly and total spend, burn rate against the flighting plan, and alerts for under- or over-delivery.

What questions should you ask in a review session?

Look for trends, not snapshots. Compare week-over-week and month-over-month, favour consistent patterns over one-off spikes, and annotate campaign changes so the context is not lost. Then ask:

1. What is driving conversions?
2. Are there any surprising underperformers?
3. Where are we getting the best efficiency?
4. What has changed compared with previous flights?
5. What optimisation opportunities exist?
6. How are competitors shifting their strategies?

Segmenting the data helps answer these questions. It shows which audiences deserve more budget, where optimisation opportunities sit and which messages land. Three or more occurrences of the same result usually make a genuine pattern worth investigating, while a single spike should be noted but not over-read.

Also check the report itself. Does it explain what the numbers mean, avoid vanity metrics, and finish with recommendations?

Frequently asked questions

Written by the KBR team, an independent media and digital agency in Auckland and Christchurch.