In the dynamic world of advertising, managing advertising campaigns often represents a real headache for agencies and direct advertisers. Laborious searching for scattered information, data consolidation and tedious manual reporting on Excel hamper campaign performance and profitability. Redundant entries also increase the risk of errors and inconsistencies.
To overcome these difficulties, campaign management and multimedia reporting software is necessary.
Limitations of Excel in advertising campaign management: Although Excel is widely used for advertising campaign management, this tool has major limitations that hamper productivity and process accuracy. First of all, Excel is not specifically designed for advertising management, which means it lacks specialized features needed for efficient and optimized management.
In addition, the management of advertising campaigns involves the consolidation of various expenses, ranging from press to television, including radio, billboards and digital. Excel does not facilitate the consolidation of these heterogeneous expenses in the same tool. As a result, tracking expenses becomes complex, exposing advertising professionals to potential errors and wasted considerable time.
- Search time: Finding specific information in Excel spreadsheets can be time-consuming, especially when the data is scattered across different pages.
This can cause delays in decision-making processes and in finding important information.
- Loss of information: Excel does not always provide strict control over changes to data.
Excel files shared between multiple collaborators can result in errors or accidental deletions of data, which can impact the accuracy of the information.
- Lack of rigor: Due to manual data entry and formulas, there is a risk of human error in Excel spreadsheets.
Lack of automatic verification can lead to inconsistencies and incorrect results, compromising operational rigor.
- Process complexity: When business processes involve complex calculations or interrelated data, managing these aspects in Excel can become confusing and error-prone.
Increasing complexity can make spreadsheets difficult to understand and maintain.
- Limited collaboration: Collaborating on Excel spreadsheets in real time can be complicated, especially when multiple people need to work on the same file simultaneously.
Synchronization issues and edit conflicts can cause disruption and wasted time.
- Limited scalability: As the business grows and data increases in volume, Excel may struggle to handle large amounts of information.
Performance may degrade and files may become slow and difficult to handle.
- Limited analytics: Although Excel offers basic analytics capabilities, it may be limited for performing advanced analytics or complex data models.
Businesses with sophisticated analytical needs might require more specialized tools.
The need to consolidate and automate : In order to optimize their time and improve the performance of their advertising campaigns, agencies and direct advertisers must be able to consolidate all of their expenses within a single tool. This allows them to easily view and analyze the costs associated with each advertising channel, providing better visibility into their investments.
At the same time, simplifying and automating reporting is essential for effective advertising management. Advertising professionals need a tool that allows them to easily create custom reports (release calendars, pivot tables, etc.), automate the report generation process and quickly share results with stakeholders .
Meeting the challenges with modern solutions: Faced with these challenges, some agencies are trying to develop internal tools while many others and advertisers are turning to modern advertising campaign management solutions such as Adwone developed by Adwanted Group. These tools provide a centralized platform where advertising professionals can consolidate all their expenses, regardless of the channel used. This consolidation makes it easier to track and analyze costs, helping to identify inefficiencies and optimize advertising investments.
These solutions also automate the reporting process, generating personalized reports from consolidated data.
Adwone offers features such as automated collection of business data (thanks to connections with market databases (TSM, Tariffpresse, Mediaspecs, etc.), integration with advertising platforms to retrieve data in real time, and generation of personalized reports. This saves advertising professionals valuable time, improves the accuracy of reports and makes it easier to make informed decisions based on accurate and up-to-date data.
Managing advertising campaigns represents a major challenge for advertising agencies and direct advertisers when it comes to process efficiency and accuracy. Difficulties using Excel, including expense consolidation and manual reporting, make processes inefficient and error-prone. Advertising professionals are increasingly turning to modern advertising campaign management tools that allow them to easily consolidate spend, manage and track investments, and generate automated reports for better decision-making. . By adopting these solutions, they can streamline their processes, improve their performance and maximize their return on advertising investment.