Report of the Month: Freewheel Campaign Performance

What is the report template?

From talking to our customers we are very aware that the volume of campaigns they are managing has increased exponentially over the last 12 – 18 months, with some campaign management teams are now dealing with 10x as many campaigns as they were before, and so we decided to focus to build a report to support these teams.  This report was built to help customers who use Freewheel Logs V4 to track the performance of their campaigns. Utilising some of the key Freewheel dimensions available within our platform we wanted to make a template that would highlight the performance of key markers within a Freewheel Campaign. For the definitions of any metrics and/or dimensions used throughout this post please reference our Glossary here. 

Why is it helpful?

As campaign teams get busier due to advertiser demands for OTT inventory, and especially during this Q4 period, we are able to give campaign managers a top-level overview of how all of their key metrics are performing. This report will ensure that our users are able to quickly and effectively diagnose any issues with campaigns.

This is a great report to utilise if there are concerns around delivery, specifically if you are trying to gauge how well a particular campaign is performing across various metrics; within this report you can observe changes in Placements, Selling Partners, Site Sections, and Ad Creatives.

 

Report Breakdown:

Summary Overview

This part of the report allows our users to see at a top-level how the different key inventory and campaign metrics are performing. This is a great ‘sense-check’ and will inform you if there is a big issue with your inventory more generally.

• Here we look at Ad Slots (The count of all Ad Slots), Gross Impressions (The count of all Impression events), Errors (The count of all Error events), and Rendered Fill Rate (Net Impressions/Rendered Ad Slots). 
• Ad Slots, Gross Impressions, and Errors are represented as Key Values and then also in a bar graph for trend analysis.  Rendered Fill Rate is shown as a line graph with the previous time interval performance for comparison. 

Placement IDs Performance

Breaking down these widgets by Placement is important as this allows you to see at a glance, any errors on specific campaigns. If you spot any inconsistencies, you can investigate further and solve any issues.

• The two graphs which are showing the Placement IDs performance by Gross Impressions and Errors have a date range set to the Last 7 days. This means no matter what time period you’ve selected for the overall report those widgets will always show the performance over the last 7 days, a great way to visually spot if there is a change in performance from a key Placement ID over the last 7 days. 
• The Placement IDs Performance Overview table is a breakdown of your top performing Placement IDs by Ad Slots, Rendered Ad Slots, Gross Impressions, Errors, Rendered Fill Rate, Unrendered Ad Slots and Unfilled Inventory. The tables can be sorted by whichever metric is most valuable to you when monitoring your performance of specific campaigns. 

 

Selling Partner Performance 

This is a great way to split out your programmatic and non-programmatic activity. If you can see one of your programmatic partners is generating a lot of errors, it might be worth reaching out to your Account Manager to help rectify the situation. Analysing this data can help you improve yield and also highlight any major issues in your programmatic infrastructure.

• This section includes one table widget. This table is a breakdown of your Selling Partner performance by Ad Slots, Rendered Ad Slots, Gross Impressions, Errors, Rendered Fill Rate, Unrendered Ad Slots, and Unfilled Inventory. This table can be sorted by whichever metric is most valuable to you when monitoring which Selling Partners are driving the best performance. 

Ad Creative IDs Performance

Ensuring that Ad Creatives are working as expected is key; if you were to see some inconsistency across creatives within this report, there would certainly be a need to check on the VAST tags in question and ensure that everything is working as expected.  Looking at Creative performance across Site section is also important, if there are any issues on one site section or pool of inventory, it’s possible that there is a setup issue and that this needs to be investigated more thoroughly.

• The two graphs which are showing the Ad Creative IDs performance by Gross Impressions and Errors have a date range set to the Last 7 days. This means no matter what time period you’ve selected for the overall report those widgets will always show a visual representation of the performance over the last 7 days. This is a great way to visually spot if there is a change in performance from a key Ad Creative over the last 7 days. 
• The Ad Creative ID x Site Section table widget gives you a breakdown of your top Ad Creative IDs performance by Site sections broken out by Ad Slots, Rendered Ad Slots, Gross Impressions, Errors, Rendered Fill Rate, Unrendered Ad Slots, and Unfilled Inventory. This is a great way to track which Ad Creatives may or may not be filling on specific Site Sections. 

 

Error Breakdown

This error breakdown will give an indication as to where the problems could be occurring within the video ad journey. This will allow users to see if their campaign has an issue, or if there is a wider issue with the video player/ad server.

• The Error Codes by Zone breakdown widget gives an overview of each Video Ad Zone and which Zones see the highest errors by Error Code. For more information on Video Ad Zones please see our blog post here
• The Errors by Code (Last 7 days) widget gives a visual breakdown of your Error Code performance by errors for the last 7 days, this is useful for tracking the performance and trends of errors 

 

Placement ID x Error Code x Sales Channel Type 

This section allows you to break down your Placements by Sales Channel and gives you more clarity around what is programmatic / network and what is direct-sold.

• This table shows which Placement IDs are seeing the highest amount of Errors by specific Error Codes broken out by Sales Channel Type. This data includes Ad Slots, Rendered Ad Slots, Errors, and Unfilled Inventory 

Ad Creative ID x Error Code 

This section of the report allows you to see, at a Creative level, the number of errors that are occurring on your campaigns and therefore it will help you troubleshoot any errors on your creatives.

• This table shows which Ad Creative IDs are seeing the highest amount of Errors and by which specific Error Codes. This data includes Ad Slots, Rendered Ad Slots, Errors, and Unfilled Inventory 

 

How can I find and use the report?

You can add this template to your reports by clicking through to our Report library. Or by going to ‘Create new report’ and selecting it from the list of available report templates.  Please contact your CSM if you have any questions.