Dashboards that matter

Many paid advertisers have 40-tile dashboards nobody reads. A few metrics, updated regularly, beat comprehensive dashboards ignored. Here are the dashboards that actually move the business.

The daily dashboard

Check every morning:

• Total ad spend yesterday (all channels)
• Total revenue yesterday
• MER yesterday
• Anomalies (channel up/down more than 30% vs 7-day average)

Goal: catch problems early. Not comprehensive, early warning.

The weekly dashboard

Review every Monday:

• Week-over-week: spend, revenue, MER, new customers
• By channel: spend, conversions, CAC, ROAS
• Creative performance: top 5, bottom 5
• Landing page conversion rates
• Inventory of campaigns with issues

Goal: set this week's priorities.

The monthly dashboard

Full strategic review:

• Monthly MER trend
• Blended CAC vs target
• LTV:CAC (actual, not projected)
• Cohort retention
• Channel mix trends
• Creative output (how many ads shipped)
• Incrementality lift test results (if done)

Goal: evaluate strategy. Are we on track?

Tools

• Triple Whale: DTC-focused, aggregates Meta, Google, TikTok + Shopify
• Northbeam, Rockerbox: attribution + MER
• Looker Studio / Tableau: custom dashboards from data warehouse
• Spreadsheet: for early-stage or small operations, a Google Sheet is enough

What not to dashboard

• Vanity metrics (impressions, reach, unless explicitly optimizing for them)
• Platform-reported numbers without blended context
• Per-ad metrics at the daily level (too noisy)
• Too many metrics, pick the 5-10 that drive decisions

The action orientation

Every dashboard tile should answer: "what action would I take if this number moves?" If no action follows, drop the tile.

What to do with this

• Limit dashboards to 8-10 tiles max, dashboards with 30 tiles become ignored overnight, nobody reads them in practice
• Every tile must answer "what would I do if this moves?", tiles without a tied action are ornaments, cut them
• Show trend alongside the number, a CAC of $80 means nothing without context, "$80 up 14% WoW" drives action
• Separate weekly dashboards (tactical) from monthly dashboards (strategic), don't mix cadences on one view or both decisions get ignored
• Review dashboards with the team Monday morning, dashboards without a review ritual stop working inside 3 weeks