Working with channels

Corina Alonso Updated by Corina Alonso

AudienceReport is all about audience measurement across different channels: understanding audience reach on different media channels, the overlap between reach on different channels, etc.

A few examples of channels:

  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • TV
  • Programmatic buying
  • Direct campaign on a publisher
  • Buying from an ad-network
  • etc

Budget allocation is typically linked to channels and knowing the efficiency of each channel can help drive campaign results.

In order to understand channels, we first need to talk a little about platforms. 

Platforms

You might be using different platforms for managing campaigns, for instance: 

  • Display & Video 360
  • Google Ads 
  • Meta Ads Manager 
  • Direct campaign on a publisher
  • Buying from an ad-network
  • etc

Luckily, AudienceReport can connect to many of the most popular platforms. Either using one of our direct integrations, or using semi-automated integrations. Once a platform is added, the corresponding integration will be responsible for setting up measurement (if applicable) and making reportable items available in AudienceReport.

Channels

A channel is an optional attribute of an item. A channel can be assigned to an item automatically or manually. 

For example, all items created through the Meta integration are automatically assigned  to the Facebook channel. The system does not allow you to change the channel for Facebook items. 

On the other hand, items that are created through e.g. the Campaign Manager integration are assigned a default channel, which you can change afterwards. 

Using channels, you can group multiple items together (into one channel) and see campaign performance metrics on channel level. 

 

Assigning a channel

Channels can be assigned to a parent item or child Item. When applied to a parent iItem, the channel is propagated to all its children. On child item level it is possible to overwrite the channel that was assigned on parent-level. 

You can create your own channels for all pixel-measured platforms and assign each channel a custom icon. 

For items created through the Meta and YouTube integrations, the channel can not be changed.

The example below shows a report containing two Facebook items (“Facebook - Report item - 2” and “Facebook - Report item - 3”) and two AdForm items (“AdForm - Report item - 3” and “AdForm - Report item - 4”). The two Facebook items are automatically assigned to the Meta channel. The two AdForm items are assigned the Programmatic channel. 

 

In the next section, you will see how this affects the report. 

Channels in reporting

Most of the reporting is channel-centric. This means that you will often see metrics broken down by channel. Channels give you the flexibility to control on what level report metrics should be displayed. 

For example, the items shown above will be displayed in the report as such: 

As you can see, metrics are displayed on channel level. If we expand each channel, the individual items appear:

Changing channels 

You can change the channel for all pixel-based integrations. 

Please note that changing an item’s channel will affect all the reports containing this item, because the item will now be reported as belonging to a different channel. 

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