Before You Begin: The Foundation for Success ✅
Taking a few minutes to prepare will save you hours down the line. A successful setup is 90% preparation.
Important: A Consistent Ad Naming Convention: This is the most important prerequisite. The tool cannot categorise what it cannot read. Your ad names are the language it uses to understand your strategy.
What a good naming convention looks like: It should be a consistent, logical structure that includes clear identifiers for the variables you want to analyze.
Example Ad Name: AWA_US_Q4_Brand-Video_Cat-Lovers_TestA
Breakdown: This name instantly tells us the Funnel (AWA for Awareness), Market (US), Time (Q4), Ad Concept (Brand-Video), Audience (Cat-Lovers), and Test Group (TestA). This clear structure makes setting up Custom Groupings simple and incredibly powerful. If your naming is inconsistent, your reports will be inaccurate.
Admin Access to Ad Channels: You will need administrative permissions for the ad accounts you wish to connect (e.g., Meta, TikTok). This is a one-time authorization to allow Alvie to pull performance data.
A Clear Understanding of Your Conversion Events: Know the exact names of the key actions you want to measure (e.g., Purchase, Lead, add_to_cart). You will need to select these in the dashboard to get the right conversion data as well as measure metrics like Cost Per Action (CPA) accurately.
Pro-Tip: Don't have a perfect naming convention? Don't worry. You can still get huge value by grouping by Ad Name in the dashboard to find top performers. You can always start with just Ad Name and build more groupings later.
How to Set Up the Report 🛠️
To set up the Creative insights report, follow these steps:
Go to the left-hand navigation menu.
Select Data & reporting → Reporting solutions.
Click on the 'Create new report' button.
You can watch the complete setup process in the video or refer to the step-by-step guide provided below.
Step 1. Select the report type
In the Alvie platform, navigate to Data Insights → Reporting Solutions and select the Creative Insights Report from the list of available report templates.
Step 2. Select the data sources and choose custom groupings
Here you will connect your ad accounts and define the rules for categorising your data.
Data Sources:
You have the flexibility to select any combination of data sources.
Currently, the report supports Meta (Facebook & Instagram) and TikTok.
Select the specific ad accounts you want to include in your report.
Custom Grouping: Custom grouping is important in the Creative reporting. The report is aggregated on an ad level but includes market and channel grouping levels to gain an easy overview across multiple ad creatives.
Conversion name filter: This feature helps you focus your report on specific types of conversions by filtering based on keywords or phrases related to conversion actions. To learn more about how to use the filter, follow the documentation here.
Step 3. Define data target properties
In this step, you will define the Google Cloud project and BigQuery output dataset where your data will be stored. For most projects, this is already set up, so you may not need to change anything.
You can also define the schedule for creating the report. By default, this is set to daily, which we recommend.
Step 4. Other setting
This step includes only one required setting: Target currency. Setting the target currency within the report does not impact the currency displayed in Creative reporting, as that is determined solely by the Workspace-level currency setting. Instead, this target currency option is used to adjust the currency displayed in the older associated Creative Insights Looker Studio dashboard.
Furthermore, the report offers optional custom groupings. These custom groupings make it easier to obtain an aggregated overview of various aspects of your ad campaigns. They allow you to quickly segment and analyse data based on key criteria, helping you gain deeper insights and optimise performance. Here’s a brief overview of what each grouping does:
# | Custom grouping | Details |
1 | Audience grouping | Categorizes audience segments targeted by your ads, such as demographics, interests, or behaviors. |
2 | Ad name grouping | Organizes ads based on creative names for performance comparison. |
3 | Ad format grouping | Classifies ads by format, such as video, carousel, or static image, to analyze which formats perform best. |
4 | Test grouping | Groups ads based on A/B testing conditions or variants to evaluate the impact of different test conditions. |
5 | Conversion grouping | Organizes ads by the type of conversion they are optimized for, such as leads, purchases, or sign-ups. |
6 | Funnel grouping | Segments ads according to their position in the marketing funnel—upper, middle, or low—for performance analysis. |
7 | Custom campaign type | Allows categorization of campaigns based on custom criteria like 'Awareness' or 'Retargeting'. |
8 | Custom grouping 1-4 | Provides flexible groupings that users can define for custom segmentation, such as messaging type, visual style, product type etc. |
Step 5. Activate the report
Once your setup is complete, click the "More" option in the top right and select "Run now". This initial run can take up to an hour as it processes all your data and rules for the first time.
If successful, the report status will change to "Active" in green. If it's red, there is an error in your setup (usually in a custom grouping).
Your data will refresh automatically every morning. If you update a custom grouping and want to see the changes immediately, you must use the "Run now" option again.
Pro-Tips for a Smooth Workflow 🚀
Start Small: Don't try to build every grouping for all your campaigns at once. Test your setup on a single, recent campaign first. This makes troubleshooting much easier.
Create Template Dashboards: Build a few core dashboards that your whole team can use as a starting point, such as a "Weekly Creative Snapshot."
Tell a Story with Your Data: When you share a dashboard link, include a brief summary of what the data is telling you and the top 1-2 insights you've found.
Bookmark Your Key Views: Once you have a dashboard filtered to a view you use often, bookmark the URL. The filters are saved in the link, giving you one-click access to your report.
What happens next
Once you have activated your report, you can start building your first Creative reporting dashboard.