Report Exports: Best Practices & Guidelines

Understanding the Best Practices of Pulling Data

Export Best Practices and Pointers

• When creating an export, we recommend pulling in all columns that are available within the export. These columns can be pared down after you retrieve the csv, however, selecting all columns when generating an export ensures you have all available data for storytelling and data analysis. 
• Exports should be generated for no more than 3 months worth of data at a time. 
• Existing reports can be edited, however, we recommend that you save a versioned copy of old reports before overwriting the old report parameters for refreshed data output. 
• Reports allow you to view campaign performance from different angles, and are not meant to be used additively. Because the data is broken out at different levels (such as line item, podcast, placement, etc), information within most reports are not deduplicated.
• The quality of the data available within attribution campaign reports relies heavily on proper placement of the Spotify pixel.
  • When placing the pixel, we recommend following our pixel best practices and pixel placement verification guides here. 
  • Because each brand approaches the pixel in a different way, the brand and/or associated agency should maintain record of how pixels are triggered and where pixels are firing
• Spotify Ad Analytics displays spend based on the total overall cost of the campaign and the number of impressions delivered. The Spend metric in Spotify Ad Analytics should not be used to calculate the actual spend to date of a campaign
• Each data export provides a different slice of the overall data used in the campaign performance dashboard. These exports are not meant to be compared to one another.
  • If manipulating data, keep in mind that tables are not meant to provide specific detail and are not meant to be joined. 

Data Exports based on needs

Granular Conversion Data

• When reviewing a single campaign’s performance on a granular level, your go-to report should be the Campaign Conversions export.
• Conversely, if you would like to review the granular details across all campaigns with an advertiser, you will use the Organization Campaign Conversions export.
• Each conversion report provides unmodeled data, and as such will not match the dashboard in the dashboard’s default state.
• If you want to compare the data from this report to the campaign dashboard, you will need to review the campaign as “unmodeled” for more alignment between report and campaign. 

Campaign Conversions

• This report provides granular details surrounding conversions that have been attributed to the respective campaign.
• This export is campaign specific and will display only the information that is selected when generating the report

Organizational Conversions

• This export will provide all attributed conversions across all campaigns for the date range selected. 

General Overview Export Options

For a higher-level, aggregated view of a campaign’s performance, you can utilize one of the following options. Here are some tips to follow while pulling this data:

• These reports provide both modeled and unmodeled data of the campaign’s associated performance through the data range selected.
• The granularity of this data will depend on the granularity of the data that is sent to Spotify Ad Analytics by the publisher.
  • Some campaigns will display episode level data, whilst others will only display overview information based on the line-item within the campaign. 
• When exporting data for the purpose of importing into BI tools or to add data to previously pulled date ranges for the same campaign, we recommend stacking the report in intervals of 7-14 individual days or 1-2 weeks, depending upon the report type being pulled.
• While the date range of “All Time” can be selected in either report type below, please note that a previously pulled “all-time” export should not be compared 1 for 1 to a new “all-time” export, as IP categorization and attribution windows may impact or shift the data from one week to the next should not be compared. Campaign data is not complete until after the campaign itself has reached a status of “complete”. 

Campaign Overview

This export provides the overview details of a campaign’s performance. While it is limited to a single campaign, the way and cadence by which this data is pulled will impact your stacking approach. If this export is only pulled once or twice during the life of the campaign, the report can be pulled following standard best practices. However, if this report is pulled on a regular basis, stack this report accordingly (if pulled weekly, only pull one-week of data each time this export is generated). . 

Organization Weekly Overview

This export is not as granular as the aforementioned report and is meant to provide you a high level overview of the campaigns running for the brand on a weekly basis over the course of the date range you have selected. This contains both modeled and unmodeled data, and is broken out per campaign per line item. This report can be pivoted to filter for specific line items, specific campaigns, specific publishers, etc. 

Following best practices as listed above, we recommend this report is pulled in a stacked manner. For example, if you were to pull one month’s worth of data one month after the campaign launched, then proceeded to generate the report on a weekly basis thereafter, we recommend pulling only 1-2 weeks of data each time this report is generated. The report should not significantly overlap the data from the export generated previously. 

Organization Daily Overview 

Similar to the weekly report above, this report will provide a high level overview of all campaigns within the date range selected. Unlike the weekly report, this report will break performance data down on a daily basis. This report will include all conversions that occurred during the date range selected, even if an exposure to the campaign did not occur during the selected reporting time frame. 

When creating an Organization Daily Overview, we highly recommend stacking this report in shorter increments, as multiple campaigns and their respective line items will appear throughout this report in daily increments.

Export Support

The Spotify Ad Analytics Support Team is available to assist with data export questions, however, are limited in the support provided beyond the data export itself. As a neutral player in the analytics data that is provided, the team cannot: 

• Analyze or otherwise support the analysis of data
• Generate reports on behalf of the client
• Pivot data or otherwise manipulate data for the client
• Provide data manipulation advice
• Review/investigate externally sourced data
• Review/investigate data that has been manipulated (post export)
• Provide recommendations or suggest optimizations
• Review campaign performance
• Advise whether a campaign is/is not performing well
• Provide exports/data dumps:
  • All available data exports or dumps can be found directly within the UI