Forbes reports that ad spend in 2021 will increase by 3.2% to $236.7 billion. With millions around the world on lockdown and in front of screens much of their day, it makes sense that ad spend continues to grow.

But, as anyone who has done multi-channel digital advertising campaigns knows, getting those ads live is only half the battle. As the old advertising adage goes, “You’re wasting 50% of your ad spend, you just don’t know which 50%.”

Ad analytics adversity

Why is advertising analytics so tough to do well? There are a few reasons:

Your ad data lives in disparate platforms. Want to understand how your LinkedIn ads performed? You have to log into the platform and manipulate the pre-built levers to see your data in different ways. It requires expertise in the platform and its reporting methods as well as time and patience. Add in even more platforms, and you’ve got a full-time job just hopping back and forth between platforms.

You live in Excel hell. The best way to progress your analytics is to get it out of the limited in-app reporting. But for many, that often means dumping large amounts of data into Excel, where you tab across datasets or run — and maintain — complicated and brittle formulas.

Many of you know these headaches all too well, which is why you’ve adopted the modern data stack to get your data out of your platforms and into your cloud data warehouse, automatically. Now comes the fun stuff.

Aggregating with dbt transformations

In order to support your efforts to improve your ad analytics, we’ve released a new Fivetran data model that rolls up the ad spend, clicks and impressions of some of the biggest advertising platforms, including Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Bing, Twitter and LinkedIn.

With this new model, you’ll be able to get a unified view of all your ad efforts. With this unified view, you can begin to understand your marketing mix, what’s working and when.

Never again be in the dark on your ad spend; we’re here to help you get the most of your data. You can get all the information about our new package here. We’re also offering a 15-minute installation consultation with our dbt expert if you need some set up help.