Reading your campaign report

Within ten business days of the final placement you receive one report: what ran, where, when, what happened and what we recommend next. This page explains how to read it.

The structure

1. Summary — three or four sentences in plain language.
2. What you told us success would look like, and how the campaign measured against it.
3. What ran — every placement with its date, a screenshot or link, and the publisher’s proof of delivery.
4. What happened — the numbers by placement, in the table below.
5. What we noticed — observations that the numbers do not show on their own.
6. What we recommend — keep, change, stop.

The numbers, defined

Metric	Means	Where it comes from
Sends	Emails delivered for a newsletter placement	Publisher’s email platform
Opens / open rate	Emails opened, as a share of sends. Inflated by mail apps that pre-load images; treat as an indicator, not a count	Publisher
Impressions	Times a display ad or page was shown	Publisher’s ad system or analytics
Clicks / click-through rate (CTR)	Clicks on your link, as a share of sends or impressions	Publisher, confirmed by your tagged links
Downloads	Podcast episode downloads at 7 or 30 days. A download is not a listen, but it is the standard unit	Podcast host dashboard
Page views / time on page	Views of a sponsored feature and how long readers stayed	Publisher analytics
Sessions	Visits to your landing page from a tagged link	Your analytics
Enquiries / conversions	Forms, calls, bookings — whatever you defined as success	Your side, plus “how did you hear about us”

Rough benchmarks for independent media

These are wide ranges from campaigns we have run. Independent newsletters and podcasts with engaged audiences routinely beat what large platforms report, because the audience chose to be there.

Placement	Typical range	Notes
Newsletter open rate	35–55%	Higher for small, focused lists
Newsletter click rate on sponsor link	1–4% of sends	Useful, specific copy is the biggest variable
Display CTR	0.1–0.5%	Low by nature; display works on familiarity
Sponsored feature	300–3,000 views; 2–4 min on page	Time on page matters more than views
Podcast host-read	2–6% of downloads visit the vanity URL over 30 days	Response continues for weeks
“How did you hear about us”	10–40% name a campaign placement	Often the most persuasive figure

A number outside these ranges is not automatically good or bad; it is a prompt to look at why.

What good looks like

• The right people arrived. Time on page, pages per visit and enquiry quality tell you more than volume.
• Enquiries you would not otherwise have had. Count them, and count the ones that mention the placement.
• The name is being searched. Branded search and direct visits during the flight, compared to the four weeks before.
• The publisher heard from readers. Replies, questions and forwards are strong signals.
• You would run it again, with one change. That is what a working campaign usually feels like.

What a weak result usually means

Symptom	Likely cause	Usual fix
Good opens, few clicks	Copy was about the brand, not the reader	Rewrite around the reader’s question
Good clicks, few enquiries	Landing page did not match, or the form failed on mobile	Fix the page before spending more
Good podcast downloads, no vanity-URL visits	URL was hard to say, or read too quickly	Shorter URL, mid-roll position, repeat once
Everything low	Wrong audience for the offer	Change publishers before changing creative

Questions worth asking us

• Which single placement would you repeat, and why?
• What would you change in the creative before running again?
• Is there a publisher we did not use who would fit better?
• What did readers or listeners say?

We would rather have that conversation than send a bigger PDF.