As an agency, monitoring and reporting on client campaigns is a crucial part of your business. But juggling multiple spreadsheets, networks and platforms can be an inefficient hassle.
This comprehensive guide will teach you how to create effective Retail media dashboards to impress clients and gain better insights into your campaigns.
What is a retail advertising dashboard and why do you need one?
A retail media dashboard consolidates campaign data (sponsored products, DSP…) from multiple retail media networks into one centralized, visual interface.
It allows you to easily track key metrics, identify trends, and create professional reports to share with clients.
Here are 5 key benefits of using a dashboard over manual reporting:
- Save time — Automatically pull data instead of compiling spreadsheets. Easily create reports in minutes not hours.
- Centralized data — Connect data from all platforms (Amazon Ads, Criteo, CitrusAd, etc.) for a unified view.
- Visualizations — Charts and graphs highlight trends and insights.
- Shareable — Give clients interactive dashboard access or export PDF/CSV reports.
- Actionable insights — Focus on key metrics tied to campaign objectives and ROI.
In short, dashboards from your retail media campaigns give you an eagle eye view of performance to make better decisions and keep clients happy.
Choosing the right reporting metrics and KPIs
With so much data available, it can be tempting to track every metric under the sun. But that leads to cluttered dashboards that hide the most important insights.
These are the key metrics and KPIs to focus on when measuring and optimizing your retail media campaigns:
- Average order value (AOV)
- Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
- CPC (Cost per Click)
- Liftetime value (LTV)
- Advertising cost of sales (ACOS)
Avoid vanity metrics like clicks or impressions that don’t provide actionable data. Take into account retail-specific metrics (sales obviously, but also price and stock at categories and SKU levels). Always tie your KPIs back to broader campaign goals and client ROI.
Connecting data from all your Retail Media networks
To get the complete picture, your dashboard needs to consolidate data from every platform you use — Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Criteo, CitrusAd, Instacart, etc.
This gives you centralized reporting and the ability to segment data by platform, campaign, ad set, and more, to monitor your advertising revenue. You can easily compare performance across channels to see what’s working best.
Data to include in your dashboard:
- Media data (networks, platforms…)
- Sales data (wholesale, marketplace, D2C)
- Market data (competitors’ stock, prices, panels…)
A platform like mimbi.io make it easy to connect all these sources via API integrations or CSV uploads.
5 tips for designing compelling Retail Media dashboards
Once you’ve got all the data feeding in, it’s time to organize it into compelling, professional dashboards.
Follow these best practices:
1. Prioritize key metrics. Focus your main dashboard page on the most important KPIs. Don’t overwhelm clients with endless charts.
2. Use annotations. Call out key events like new campaign launches, budget changes, or tests.
3. Customize branding. Add your agency (or your client’s) logo, colors, and fonts for white labeled reports.
4. Keep it simple. Stick to essential metrics and easy-to-read visualizations. Avoid clutter.
5. Make it actionable. Structure your dashboards to highlight opportunities and insights.
With the right design, your dashboards will tell the data story and showcase your expertise.
Automating and sharing reports with clients
The true power of retail ads dashboards lies in scheduling automatic report updates and distribution.
You can have new reports covering retail media networks youuu cover, delivered right to your clients’ inboxes on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Give them 24/7 access to live dashboards to foster transparency.
Other sharing options include:
- BI tools (Looker, Looker Studio, PowerBI…) — Will allow your clients to fully control their design and merge retail media with their internal data (like margins or forecasts).
- Data-warehouses (Bigquery, AWS, Snowflake…) — Let clients drill-down into the raw data.
- PDF/CSV exports — Great for emailing reports.
Automated reporting saves tons of time while delivering up-to-date insights to clients. Just set it and forget it.
Retail advertising reports mistakes to avoid
As helpful as dashboards are, they can backfire if not built properly. Steer clear of these common pitfalls:
Cluttered designs — Cramming endless metrics and charts creates confusion. Always go for clean and focused.
No call-to-action — Without next steps or recommendations, the dashboard is just “data puke.” Guide clients towards opportunities.
Not white labeled — Branded reports look more polished and professional. They help showcase your expertise.
Too high-level — Dashboards need enough segmentation to provide actionable data (e.g. category, brand or SKU-level metrics).
Audience misalignment — Make sure dashboards are tailored to each client’s sophistication and goals.
Neglecting insights — Without annotations and context, it’s just numbers on a screen. Add value through analysis.
Avoid these mistakes and your retail media dashboards will be client favorites.
Conclusion and next steps
Well-designed dashboards provide immense value to retail media agencies through centralized reporting, time savings, and actionable insights.
They help better manage client campaigns on Amazon and other marketplaces, while delivering impressive, professional reports.
To get started, register to a platform like mimbi. Connect your accounts, import and structure your data.
Then schedule automated report delivery to clients and monitor the data flowing in. Before you know it, you’ll have actionable retail media dashboards that become a core part of your client services and demonstrate your expertise.
Note: this post was previously published in French on Medium: https://medium.com/retail-media-france/agences-quels-tableaux-de-bord-pour-le-retail-media-a8b390be27c5
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