What is the required format and best practices when sending offline data?
Context
This article outlines data format options and requirements, as well as best practices for sending offline spend data to INCRMNTAL. Ensuring proper data structuring helps accurately measure the impact of offline campaigns on overall performance.
Offline ad spend such as influencers, TV, OOH, and so on, can be easily integrated with INCRMNTAL, allowing you to measure the incremental impact of such marketing channels.
The process is very simple, thanks to the flexibility of the the INCRMNTAL platform and the ability to process data from multiple sources without any need to "match" between the ad spend and the sales data.
Typically, customers will integrate offline ad spend using Google Sheets or files being dumped to a shared S3 bucket. Below is an explanation on what types of data should be included.
For achieving greater accuracy with INCRMNTAL, it is important to incorporate your offline and non-performance marketing marketing activities with the platform.
While we present best practices and common examples, if you have a different type of non-performance activity that you would like our help with supporting, please let us know during the integration call.
Those types could include: regular sponsorships, sport matches and others.
Data Format
When sending offline spends (such as TV, Influencers, or Out-of-Home advertising) to INCRMNTAL, those should be formatted in a way that aligns with the structure of your existing reporting. If you're already sending all of your KPIs and spend data in a single Google Sheet, you can include offline spends just as you would any other channel.
Data Format Options
We support multiple data-format options, the main ones are listed in this sample sheet.
The full explanation on all supported data formats will be shared with you during your first integration call.
Please make sure to keep your data format consistent, without additional signs, commas or separators. If you need any specific guidance, or support multiple currencies, please let us know during your integration process.
Best Practices
To properly connect spend changes with their impact on overall (blended) performance, it is highly recommended to share this spend data with daily granularity. If daily breakdowns are unavailable, alternative methods to proxy the spend are recommended.
Best Practices for Proxying Spend Data
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By volume of daily impressions or views – Estimating spend distribution based on observed daily impressions.
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By learning from the spending unit’s ad stock in past activities – If historical data is available, use prior knowledge to model spend distribution. For example, a TV campaign may have 0.3 of its impact on the first day, then increased and then gradually decaying over the following two weeks. These ratios, once understood, could then be used as ratios for a daily spend recalculation.
If you are unable or unsure of how to use any of the above options, please share this with the INCRMNTAL support team during the integration process, and we will find a joint solution.
What if I only get these spends with a delay?
The platform supports retroactive changes.
However, since our models rely on aggregated data, making significant retroactive adjustments may alter results for existing channels. We recommend updating spends as soon as possible.
If you are adjusting spends more than 2 weeks in the past, or have a specific timing for updates, please inform your Customer Success Manager (CSM) to ensure availability in the platform and optimize decision-making best practices.
To understand how to connect offline spends with your dashboard, see the guide on Google Sheets integration, or alternatively, the AWS integration guide.
For any question please contact onboarding@incrmntal.com , or open a support Ticket here.