Reporting and Data

Question: What type of insights are you able to provide?

Answer: Our creative intelligence dashboard will provide you with the most granular information about creatives from the more standard metrics (VTR - CTR - Engagement rates) to the more sophisticated ones (user interactions analysis - A/B testing comparison etc.)

Question: How often is reporting data updated?

Answer: Connected-Stories NEXT offers multiple reporting tiers and data updates are based on those tiers. 

• Tier 1: Data is collected to report all standard campaigns KPI updated every 24h. 

• Tier 2: Data is collected to express all advanced features of the C-S NEXT platform and monitor in near real-time (15 mins delay) fashion the status of the campaigns to make allow for real-time campaign optimizations. 

• Tier 3: All data collected are cleaned and arranged to meet user needs at best. Data are managed within the best-in-class cloud services ready to be used with 3rd party tools with API integrations in real-time.

Question: How often is conversion data updated within reporting?

Answer: Conversions are treated like any other metric in terms of availability within the Connected-Stories data dashboards and therefore subject to the different tiers available.

Question: How is cross-environment/user/device recognition accomplished?

Answer: Connected-Stories uses the so-called  C-S ID, which is a proprietary hybrid solution capable of leveraging device IDs alongside leveraging the ETag through the HTTPS protocol within the browsers' cache, in order to map users across different environments and reconcile the entire consumer journey.

Question: Do you record mobile, video, and desktop display impressions on (impression served/count on decision) (impression rendered/count on download)

Answer: Yes

Question: Do you have the ability to define the time period of the report, and export either total reach or incremental reach for a given time period?

Answer: Yes

Question: What metrics are considered standard reporting metrics within your platform?

Answer: All of the standard media metrics and ratios down every single creative variation are considered standard metrics.

Question: What engagement metrics can you capture?

Answer: Any engagement metrics and user interactions with the ad units. These metrics are part of our advance reporting tiers also named "creative intelligence insights"

Question: Do you offer visualization of reporting?

Answer: Yes. All of Connected-Stories NEXT dashboards are native to our platform and have been developed by our internal product team. They feed from Google Big Query giving end-users a visual and granular understanding of campaign performance. Data visualization architecture uses a layered caching system to let the user query a very large amount of data with blazing performance. C-S data product is divided into two different tools: Data analytics interactive dashboard and Campaigns Creative Intelligence. The data dashboards allow the user to query data to get all major campaign metrics and KPIs, filtered and grouped. Campaigns Creative Intelligence allows users to deeply understand in near real-time user behavior on each creative, video, and display, and a compelling visual fashion. Campaigns Creative Intelligence allows the user to make a time-based Ad analysis on all different creative versions and understand the drop-off curve, engagement rate, and so on. This gives the user the power to perform changes and granular optimization of the campaign while running. All the raw data that feed the data dashboards can be organized to be exported by the user through a standard interface, this allows the design of custom intelligence on the data alongside an ML model training to best feets the user's needs.

Question: Do you offer viewability reporting?

Answer: Yes, with granularity on every single creative variation both video and display

Question: How granular can reporting be broken down? I.e. by date, by week, day of the week, device, browser, location (DMA/city), etc.

Answer: Connected-Stories reporting can be broken very granularly using date and time, day of the week, week, month, device, browser, OS, geolocation such as zip codes, DMA, city, publishers, context, and more.

Question: For video ad serving, is data available on impressions, quartiles, completed view, content, player size, etc.? 

Answer: Yes

Question: How often are false impressions, clicks, etc. removed from the data?

Answer: Connected-Stories reports immediately false traffic or clicks generated by bots or by suspicious activities happening on the creatives or the publishers' pages.

Question: What method is used to remove false impressions, clicks, etc., generated by non-standard means?

Answer: We implement both user behavior analysis as well as analyzing the device vitals and other signals to detect suspicious activities.

Question: How do you handle click fraud after reporting is processed?

Answer: We remove those suspicious clicks from the overall report and highlight suspicious activities separately in the reports.

Question: Does the ad server track post-event activity (post click and post impression)?

Answer: Yes, via our C-S Pixel which needs to be set up on the advertisers' landing pages.

Question: Do you provide a dedicated attribution solution?

Answer: Yes

Question: Do you provide click or exposure attribution based on the count of exposures?

Answer: Yes, this is again subject to C-S ML Algorithms which take into consideration user behavior and exposures of different creatives thoroughly.

Question: Does the company track post-even activity and provide customized weighted attribution that can be defined by the agency?

Answer: Yes, although the weight cannot be currently customized externally or over-imposed. Connected-Stories ML Algorithms take care of that and cannot currently be modified by an external agent

Question: Do you offer customized modeling or recommendation of attribution that can be viewed alongside last-click/last-view?

Answer: Yes, subject to C-S ML Algorithms which take into consideration user behavior and exposures of different creatives thoroughly.

Question: Does the platform have the ability to provide time between ad exposure and conversion activities?

Answer: Yes

Question: Is reporting for all mediums available within the reporting UI? (Display/Video/Search/Social)?

Answer: Yes for both display and video, while we don't do search or social currently.

Question: What is your stance on data collection and ownership?  

Answer: We are committed to protecting the privacy and security of your content and your customers' data. You own your data and hold all rights to your content and IP (source). The product is integrated with the IAB consent management platform and its creative distribution service implements the consent string handling. The personalization features of NEXT are designed to dynamically adapt the granularity to what is requested by the consent string. Additionally, we undergo regular audits from advisory firms.

Question: Is Deterministic data utilized in some capacity for ad server decision-making or reporting?

Answer: Yes, we use a mix of probabilistic and deterministic data in order to personalize creatives in real-time.

Question: If so, is leveraged deterministic data collected directly through the platform or an affiliated platform owned and operated under the same parent company, or is it provided by an outside source? If able to disclose, please provide the outside data provider.

Answer: Usually by leveraging our integrations with DSPs or DMPs.

Question: What is the scale of leveraged deterministic data?

Answer: This depends on each partner/advertiser and the DMPs/DSPs they use as part of their ad tech stack.

Question: Do you do data matching?

Answer: We don't do data matching as we are not a classic ad server.

Question: Can you ingest offline data into your reporting suite?  

Answer: As long as we have shared IDs or a joint lookup table, offline data can be ingested within Connected-Stories NEXT either via APIs (the same used to extract data from our raw databases) or by uploading structured CSV files sent through FTPS

Question: How far back can reporting data be pulled and for what type of reports?  (Quarterly, yearly)

Answer: Any report is available at least up to 12 months prior. More custom reports and integrations are decided upon the formalization of the agreement.

Question: Can you report down to the creative version & variant levels?

Answer: Yes

Question: Are you able to report conversions at the creative version & variant levels?

Answer: Yes

Question: Do you have the ability for the reporting tool to allow users to save and share reports?

Answer: Yes

Question: Is there an option to schedule reporting from the interface? 

Answer: Yes

Question: Do you have the ability to identify poor performance (as defined by the user), and automate alerts to a pre-defined contact list upon discovering under-performers?

Answer: Yes, this is part of our most advanced analytics tier.

Question: Do you offer auto-reporting options for advanced reports?

Answer: Yes, custom and standard reports can be produced automatically via Connected-Stories tier 2 and 3 dashboards.

Question: Do you have the ability to upload offline conversion data into the ad server?

Answer: Yes, Connected-Stories can reconcile conversion data using our own C-S Pixel to track goals on an advertiser's landing page or as well as reconcile separate 3rd-party measured conversions.

Question: Does the ad server have the ability to provide audience delivery and performance reporting? At what granularity?

Answer: Audience delivery reporting is based on the DSPs/DMPs information we can retrieve at the ad call, like for creative personalization. Granularity depends on the data available from those 3rd-party platforms which Connected-Stories is able to tight with creative variations performance.

Question: Is the ad server able to report GRPs?

Answer: No, as we are not a pure ad server

Question: Is the ad server able to provide cookie-level reports?

Answer: Yes, based on Connected-Stories NEXT unique IDs or via 3rd-party IDs if shared with Connected-Stories NEXT at the ad call.

Question: Are additional metrics such as Advertising or Device ID able to be collected and ingested by other 3rd parties?

Answer: Yes, Connected-Stories data feedback look leverages the Connected-Stories ID, thus allowing to track anonymously user behavior with any single creative and creative elements, in order to enable 3rd-party platforms to leverage the data for alternative use such as buying media or reconciling the consumer journey.

Question: Do you offer cross-device reporting? If so, how granular can you go?

Answer: Connected-Stories NEXT offers cross-device reporting to a pretty extensive granularity taking into consideration all the limitations and changes happening in the industry.

Question: What is your methodology behind your cross-device capabilities? Please elaborate on what fuels it deterministically or probabilistically

Answer: We rely on an ML-based probabilist approach which takes into consideration a number of signals (context, geo, device, location, etc.) and then mixes them with the Connected-Stories NEXT ID, in order to map users with as much precision as possible. The amount of data available in any region affects the granularity and effectiveness of the solution.

Question: Do you offer any current solutions for ITP? Please elaborate

Answer: It's an alternative solution we have developed in order to work around ITP Safari implementations which allows Connected-Stories NEXT to use the user's cache instead of traditional cookies.

Question: How long are log files available? How far back is historical data available?

Answer: There is no limit to the extent to which we can preserve and store historical data. As partners choose to engage with Connected-Stories Tier 3 data solution, this can be subject to the agreement.

Question: What fields can be captured within log files?

Answer: Any raw information and metrics we are capable to report on through our Tier 1 and 2 data dashboards.

Question: Do your log files contain a universal user ID?

Answer: We both report Connected-Stories NEXT IDs alongside any 3rd-party ID or Universal ID if shared with Connected-Stories at the ad call.

Question: How long does the setup for API delivery take?

Answer: This depends on the sort of integration needed. Ours are standard APIs built on the Google Cloud Platform and already compliant with most industry-leading platforms in the market. Estimate time for integration float around 3 to 10 business days.

Question: What is the cadence in which log files can be delivered?

Answer: This depends on the service calling on our APIs. It can be set up in any sort of way the partner chooses to execute the integration.

Question: Are external reports available via API, Log Files, and/or CSV?

Answer: All data collected by Connected-Stories NEXT is cleaned and arranged to best meet the user needs, data are stored and processed by the top performance industry-lead cloud services ready to be used with 3rd party tools with standard connectors. This means that with Connected-Stories Tier 3 custom reporting, partners can tap into our data either utilizing our APIs or leveraging CSV structured files delivered via FTPS.