One Dashboard To Rule Ad Spend Across All Platforms

There are a few ways to get visibility & control across your ad platforms:

Good Ol' Reliable Spreadsheet

The most common approach is to use a spreadsheet for tracking purposes. Let's walk through the typical steps.

Step 1: Establish your ad budgets based on campaigns, departments/customers, countries, product lines - tailoring to your ad campaign strategies. Determine the timeframe - be it weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually.

Step 2: Define your campaign limits to effectively monitor for overspending by comparing actual spend versus the allocated budget.

Step 3: Import the ad campaign data from the ad platforms into your spreadsheet.

Step 4: Present the data visually through graphs or charts, customizing the format to suit your preferences.

Pros:

• Easy to implement and everyone (or at least they should!) knows spreadsheets
• Relatively low cost

Cons:

• Tedious and manual.
• Limited historical data. You would usually wait for the period (weekly or monthly)before importing the data to compare actual spend to budget. This will quickly become overwhelming and messy as the number of campaigns and ad platforms grows.
• Error prone. A shift in the cells or a deletion of an entire column can mess up the entire dashboard and sometimes can be difficult to recover.

Business Intelligence Platforms

Fortunately, business analysts have recognized that their digital marketers need help to effectively monitor budget spend across digital ad platforms. There are a plethora of options available in the realm of business data tools, ranging from specialized SaaS services tailored for marketing professionals like funnel.io, to integrating ad platforms into your existing tech stack via Zapier. Business intelligence platforms such as Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Sisense, Qlik, and others offer enterprise-grade solutions.

Pros:

• Gain real-time insights through dynamic dashboards across digital ad platforms
• Ability to slice and dice data with ease
• Because it's a platform, it's easier to share with the entire organization so that everyone has a consolidated view of the business or the marketing performance.

Cons:

• These platforms cost money, and some of the enterprise features can be quite costly.
• Will probably need support from internal Business Intelligence (BI) teams and ongoing maintenance for platform integrations as the business scales up.
• Customizability is limited to the skills of a limited few (the BI team usually)

Billing Card Analytics for Real-Time Visibility

Using spreadsheets can be time-consuming, prone to errors, and not the most effective use of resources. While a high-end BI platform may offer real-time consolidated view, it can come with a hefty price tag and require technical support and integration. What about a solution that strikes the perfect balance, offering real-time visibility into ad spend across ad platforms without the complexity or high costs?  It's possible by harnessing the power of corporate card data (used in ad billing) for insightful analytics.

Utilizing corporate cards for digital advertising billing is a common practice for many businesses, allowing for payment and billing cycle flexibility on ad platforms. By setting up virtual cards for different ad platforms, clients, campaigns, and regions, you can easily segment and analyze your ad spend according to your specific needs. Setting budget limits on the cards, along with instant billing transactions, gives you real-time visibility into ad spending across all ad platforms via an analytics dashboard.

Pros:

• Real-time insights into ad spend on the dashboard, without any additional costs or complex integrations needed, by leveraging the power of billing card data.

Cons:

• More detailed campaign information requires logging into individual ad platforms

By combining a virtual corporate card solution with an intuitive analytics platform, digital marketers can effortlessly track their ad spending in real-time across digital ad platforms with minimal hassle. 

Aspire, the perfect companion for marketing agencies

In today's dynamic advertising landscape, managing ad spends efficiently is crucial for the success of any agency. Aspire emerges as a comprehensive all-in-one solution designed to provide agencies with a holistic overview of their advertising expenditures. With Aspire, your agency gains the ability to track and analyze ad spends across various platforms, ensuring a complete understanding of where your budget is allocated. This invaluable tool not only minimizes the risk of overspending but also allows your team to shift their focus from financial concerns to strategic goals and campaign optimization.

Loop Marketing Group utilizes Aspire's corporate cards in their day-to-day

Furthermore, when it comes to staying one step ahead in the competitive realm of marketing, Loop Marketing Group relies on Aspire to power its innovative approach to ad payments.

Before Aspire, they had to make do with sharing one card across teams servicing multiple clients. Not only was this a security concern, but it also gave them no visibility of spend on a client/ project level. After switching to Aspire, our cutting-edge corporate cards provide Loop Marketing Group with unparalleled control and flexibility in managing ad expenses and have 1 card per client and per project.

Loop Marketing Group relies on Aspire to drive its innovative approach to ad payments, maintaining a strategic edge. Aspire's advanced cards afford Loop Marketing Group unprecedented control and flexibility in effectively managing advertising expenses.

We cover a more in-depth case study on how Loop Marketing Group stays one step ahead of its processes, powered by Aspire's corporate cards.

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Keen to know how Aspire can help you manage your expenses, prevent overspending, and streamline your finance processes? Talk to our sales today or get started for free.