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Reading Reports + Identifying Red Flags | PT

To truly assess the health of a Programmatic campaign, it's essential to look beyond the monthly NinjaCat reports. Analyzing performance trends through Month over Month (MoM) and Year over Year (YoY) comparisons provides valuable context; helping determine if dips in performance are due to seasonal patterns, a continuation of an existing decline, or other underlying factors.

Key Takeaways

  • MoM and YoY context is critical → look at trends over time to separate normal seasonality from performance issues.

  • Impression drops should be validated → against budget calculators and historical CPM trends.

  • CTR signals ad effectiveness → aim for .05%–.08%; steady declines or falling below this benchmark are red flags.

  • Ad group mix matters → campaigns should include behavioral, contextual, and retargeting groups; missing or underperforming groups suggest targeting gaps.

  • Creative health drives results → ensure correct sizes and formats are running; missing or low-performing creatives require immediate review.

 

MoM (Month over Month) and YoY (Year over Year) Changes to Look For:

  • Drop in Impressions
    • How drastic of a drop is it? Be sure to plug the clients' spend into the budget calculator to get the impression estimate range for the spend level. Are their impressions still within this range?
    • Looking YoY, what do their impressions typically look like? Could this be a time where impressions are lower because CPM’s are higher?
  • Drop in Clicks/CTR
    • When was the last time we changed creatives?
    • Do our creatives correlate/align with our target audience?
    • Is there a clear CTA on the creative enticing the user to interact?

Reading Report + Red Flags

CTR
  • As a company, we shoot for a CTR between .05%-.08%. 

Red Flag: Steady decrease in CTR, or CTR being lower than company standard for an extended period of time.

Ad Groups

  • Each Display campaign will more than likely have:
    • Behavioral Ad Group
    • Contextual Keyword Ad Group
    • 1-2 other Contextual Ad Groups
    • Retargeting Ad Group
      • Be sure to pay attention to the CTR and impressions on each ad group, and they compare MoM
        • This can help us know if we’re reaching the right people, or if we need to alter something

Red Flag: Missing ad groups, only seeing 1 or no ad groups, no retargeting ad group

Creative

  • Are the correct creatives running? If creatives are changed mid-month, you’ll often see the previous creatives still pull into the report as well. 
  • Are all of the right sizes running?
    • If we’re missing some, double check to make sure they were all submitted. If they were, maybe they’re not performing across all platforms
      • Desktop: 300x250, 728x90, 970x250, 300x600, 160x600
      • Mobile: 320x50, 300x250

 Red Flag: Creatives are missing and/or have low impressions/CTR