Running ads across several marketing channels creates a flood of numbers. But numbers alone don’t show what’s working. You need context.

That’s where advertising analytics helps. It connects your ad spend to real outcomes and shows where your advertising budget goes and what brings results.

There’s no need for guessing, as marketing teams can use data to focus on campaigns that convert and eliminate what doesn’t.

In this article, you’ll learn what advertising analytics means, what to track, and how to use it to improve your campaign performance.

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What is Advertising Analytics?

Advertising analytics helps marketers see how their ads perform by pulling data from sources like Google Ads, social media, and other advertising platforms.

It turns raw numbers into actionable insights. With it, teams can track what works, adjust quickly, and improve future results.

By using advertising analytics, you can:

• Track performance - See how ads perform across different advertising channels like search, display, and social.

• Compare results - Spot patterns by comparing campaigns across platforms or time periods.

• Adjust strategy - Use what works and stop what doesn’t to make informed decisions and choices.

• Improve budget use - Spend more on ads that convert and cut what doesn’t move the needle.

• Understand the audience - Learn consumer behavior with ads so you can fine-tune your messages and future campaigns.

• Measure ROI - Connect ad spend to conversions and revenue, not just clicks.

Types of Advertising Analytics

Marketers run ads on many platforms, and each one creates a different set of numbers. To get a clearer picture, you need to understand the types of advertising analytics used for each channel.

• Web analytics - Tracks site behavior like traffic, bounce rate, and conversions. Helps improve landing pages and boost conversion rate.

• Search engine marketing (SEM) analytics - Covers search ads on tools like Google Ads. Key metrics include click-through rate, cost per click, and conversions. Use it to adjust bidding and keyword strategy.

• Social media analytics - Measures how ads perform on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn. Helps improve social media engagement and reach the right target audience.

• Display ad analytics - Tracks how people view or interact with banner ads. Use this data to refine ad placement and creative timing.

• Email marketing analytics - Focuses on open rates, clicks, and conversions for email campaigns. Helps increase sales and improve messaging.

How Do Agencies and Marketers Do Their Advertising Efforts?

Agencies and marketing teams handle advertising efforts in different ways. Some rely on spreadsheets, others invest in tools or experts.

The method they choose affects how well they track advertising and marketing performance and respond to what the data shows.

Doing Analytics Manually or Using Basic Tools

Some marketing teams begin with the most basic setup: logging into each ad platform, copying numbers into spreadsheets, and reviewing them during a weekly or monthly check-in.

While this method can work for simple advertising campaigns, it becomes harder to manage as more marketing channels and platforms are added.

It typically involves:

• Separate reports - Each ad platform uses different formats, dashboards, and metrics. You have to pull each one manually and merge them to get a full view.

• No real-time data - Most teams only review performance once a week or after the campaigns end. That delay leads to slow responses when ads underperform.

• High error rate - Manual data entry increases the chance of skipping key metrics or misreporting campaign impact, which affects decisions.

• Fragmented insights - Without a single platform, it’s hard to compare ads side by side or link them to sales outcomes.

Manual tracking may feel like a low-cost option, but it often delays important decisions. As the number of ads and platforms grows, the work piles up, and you risk missing opportunities to fix or improve performance.

Using a Data Science Team and Sophisticated Software Tools

Larger agencies or enterprise-level marketing teams often rely on in-house data experts. These teams use advanced software to manage advertising data at scale.

A setup like this usually comes with:

• Custom dashboards - Teams use tools like Adobe Analytics, Google Analytics, or other business intelligence platforms to design dashboards that show exactly what matters for each client or brand.

• Advanced segmentation - Break down performance by audience, channel, location, or time to see which advertising channels bring the best returns.

• Automated workflows - Once set up, these tools pull from every ad platform to save time and improve accuracy.

• Deeper insights - With access to more data and stronger tech, you can go beyond surface-level numbers and measure the long-term campaign impact.

However, it requires dedicated staff, higher budgets, and time to build and maintain. For agencies managing large volumes of advertising campaigns, though, it can deliver faster insights and better decisions.

Hiring a Company to Produce Analytics

Some agencies and brands prefer to outsource their advertising analysis.

This option works well for teams that don’t have time to manage their own analytics tools or want outside support with tracking and reporting.

Outsourcing often includes:

• Custom reporting - Vendors deliver scheduled reports that focus on your top metrics, which saves your team time.

• Expert support - External analysts help make sense of the numbers and provide recommendations based on your advertising campaigns.

• Cross-platform visibility - These services usually connect to multiple advertising platforms for a holistic view without extra setup.

Although such an approach reduces the pressure on in-house staff, it also comes at a higher price. You’ll get clean reports and ready-made insights, but there’s less room to customize or dig into the details on your own.

For some teams, it’s a good fit. For others, the lack of direct access may limit how quickly they can act.

3 Tool Features to Look For to Avoid Advertising Analytics Problems

In short, marketers often struggle with three major challenges when managing advertising analytics across both digital and offline campaigns:

• Bringing data together – Gathering disconnected data from multiple sources and storing it in one place that’s easy to access.

• Making sense of it – Running calculations and identifying connections to have a better understanding of how different data sets relate to each other.

• Reporting on time – Creating clear reports and delivering them to clients and stakeholders every reporting cycle.

TapClicks handles all three.

Get campaign results in real time and make faster decisions. Schedule your TapClicks demo now!

1. Centralize Your Advertising Campaign Data

In building useful advertising analytics, you need access to all your data in one place. Without it, you’d spend too much time pulling numbers manually. That time should go to strategy and decisions.

TapClicks handles this through:

• Smart Connector - Connects to over 6,000 sources, including CRM, eCommerce, spreadsheets, and offline tools. You can build your own or let our team handle it.

• Pre-built integrations - Includes APIs for different platforms like Facebook Ads, X (Twitter) Ads, Tiger Pistol, and Genius Monkey.

• Historical data - Pulls in up to 12 months of past performance data once the connection is live.

• Automatic updates - Refreshes your data daily or on your schedule.

• Managed connections - TapClicks handles API maintenance. If a connection breaks, we fix it.

No manual pulling. No broken links. Just clean, connected data that’s ready for your analytics.

TapClicks Stores Your Data in Your Own Accessible Data Warehouse

TapClicks makes it possible to store your data in one place without relying on your data team. What you get with TapClicks:

• Fully managed warehouse - TapClicks stores your data in your own secure, private data warehouse.

• No coding needed - You don’t need data engineering skills to access or use your data.

• Always accessible - Pull data anytime to build analytics or reports without outside help.

With TapClicks, your data flows from all digital and offline sources straight into a central hub. You don’t need third-party tools or manual exports.

And if your data team wants to work inside the platform, they can.

You can learn more about the TapClicks marketing data warehouse in this article.

2. Analyze Digital Advertising Analytics Alongside Non-Digital Results

Some tools help clean and organize data, like removing columns or standardizing formats. But they don’t handle complex calculations or connect multiple data sets in a meaningful way. That’s where most of them stop.

TapClicks goes further. Once your sources are feeding into your TapClicks data warehouse, you can:

• Create custom metrics - Define new calculations that matter to your business.

• Work within one platform - No need to switch tools or rely on a data science team.

• Use metrics across the board - Set it once, and that metric is available for all analytics and reports.

Everything happens in one place. You don’t have to redo your work or reformat your data. The platform lets you move fast and focus on what matters.

Example 1: Combine Metrics Across Platforms for Better Advertising Analytics

Agencies often track the same type of engagement under different names. Follows on X, likes on Facebook, and subscribes on YouTube all point to the same behavior.

Managing them separately in a spreadsheet takes time and adds confusion.

With TapClicks, you can group these under a single umbrella metric. You choose the name, like Total Social Engagement, and define what it includes.

For example:

• Reactions on Facebook

• Views on YouTube

• Click-throughs on LinkedIn

Once you define it, TapClicks tracks it across dashboards, reports, campaigns, and client views. You won’t need to combine these numbers manually every time. You set it once, and the platform handles the rest.

Example 2: Analyze Campaign Performance by Location

Running advertising for multi-location clients means working with large data sets across many touchpoints. Without the right tools, it becomes a slow and manual job.

TapClicks lets you track and compare data by location. For example:

• View ad spend for a single dealership

• Group and compare results across regions

• Report on performance from the local to the national level

The built-in map lets you zoom in and out of cities, states, or countries. You can view CTR by month, filter by location, and switch between views instantly.

You can also segment your data by target audience, campaign type, or channel using built-in filters. It gives you flexibility without extra work.

3. Automate Advertising Data Reports in Two Ways

Building analytics across platforms takes time. Without the right system, you’ll either do it manually or rely on others to handle it. TapClicks makes it easier once your data and metrics are in place.

#1 Dashboards for Real-Time Advertising Analytics

TapClicks dashboards update daily and let you see campaign data in one place. You can build a dashboard once, save it as a template, and apply it across clients and campaigns. Any change made to the template updates everywhere.

Key benefits:

• Create once, reuse across clients

• Filter data per campaign or client

• Control access down to the widget level

#2 ReportStudio for Scheduled Client Reports

ReportStudio sends branded reports straight to clients. It fills PowerPoint-style templates with your latest data and sends them on a schedule you choose.

Features:

• Ready-to-use or custom templates

• Auto-updated with current data

• Send as PDF, PPT, or CSV

• Schedule weekly, monthly, or anytime

Make Real-Time Ad Campaign Performance Your Advantage With TapClicks

TapClicks gives you real-time visibility into your ad campaign performance, so you can respond fast. No waiting for end-of-week reports. No guessing what’s working.

With TapClicks, you can:

• Track daily results across platforms

• Spot problems early and adjust

• Optimize budget allocation based on real-time insights

• Access dashboards and reports that stay updated

You save time and avoid manual reporting. The platform handles the updates so your team can focus on action.

That’s what GreenBananaSEO (GBS) did. Before TapClicks, they used Google Data Studio and a second dashboard.

The setup lacked API connections, so they uploaded data by hand. It slowed their process and made reports look generic.

After switching to TapClicks, GBS connected all data sources, including StackAdapt. Now, they build branded dashboards, deliver near real-time results, and give clients instant access to the business result numbers they need.

Read the full case study here.

Analyze ad performance, cut wasted spend, and show results faster. Try TapClicks now!

FAQs About Advertising Analytics

What is advertising analytics?

Advertising analytics is the process of collecting and analyzing advertising data to understand how campaigns perform. It helps brands build a solid foundation for decision-making by tracking key metrics like impressions, page views, clicks, and conversions. By analyzing advertising data, marketers can identify what drives desired actions and improve results across the customer journey.

What is an advertising analysis?

An advertising analysis reviews campaign performance using real data. It focuses on identifying trends, comparing results, and spotting areas to improve. Brands often evaluate quality scores, engagement levels, and custom events to see how ads influence behavior.

Which platforms offer the best advertising analytics tools?

TapClicks, Adobe Analytics, and Google Analytics stand out for their flexibility and depth. These platforms support strong data collection, connect to multiple channels, and allow marketers to track custom events, automate insights, and support better personalization. Each helps streamline reporting and make fast, informed adjustments.

How can brands use advertising analytics to optimize search ad spend?

Brands can track performance across search campaigns by looking at quality scores, cost per click, and desired actions taken after a click. With clear data, they can cut underperforming ads and focus spending on campaigns that convert. This approach helps them maximize ROI and build more effective strategies using real-time feedback.