Master & Companion Reporting for Google Ad Manager (GAM)

The Challenge: Invoicing for Master Creatives

In digital advertising, it's common to sell products that display multiple ads on the same page, such as a master creative with one or more companion ads. For example, a "Homepage Takeover" might include a large leaderboard banner (the master) and a smaller rectangle banner (the companion).

While Google Ad Manager serves and reports impressions for all creatives, from an invoicing perspective, you often only want to bill your client for the impressions delivered by the main, or "master," creative. Manually separating this data can be time-consuming and prone to errors.

The Solution: Simplified Master Impression Reporting

ADvendio provides a simplified way to handle this scenario. By using a dedicated setting on your Google Ad Manager Connection, you can instruct all ADvendio delivery report imports for that connection to automatically identify and count only the impressions from the Master Creative, ignoring the companions.

This ensures that your performance reports and automated invoices are based on the correct delivery data, without needing complex configurations on individual Ad Types.

How it Works

The new logic can be activated via configuration on your Connection record. When you activate this feature, it overrides any Reporting Slots settings on individual Ad Types for delivery reports run through that connection. Instead the reporting will use the Impressions and Viewable Impressions, which GAM returns as Master Impressions. This behavior matches with the default numbers shown in the GAM UI, if you do not include a breakdown by Creatives in your report.

This new logic serves as the recommended standard for most master/companion use cases.

Delivery Numbers on Companions Sizes + More specific requirements (Previous default behavior)

Activating this feature on your Connection will override all Reporting Slots settings on your Ad Types for that connection. If you require a more specific reporting configuration (e.g., invoicing based on a particular companion size), you should deactivate this feature on the Connection and use the standard Reporting Slots functionality on your Ad Types instead.

Feature Setup: Activating Master Impressions Only Reporting

Prerequisite

To ensure no disruption to your current processes, this new, simplified reporting logic is an opt-in feature. To use it, a Salesforce Administrator must first add a new value to the Connection Features picklist on the Connection object and then activate it on the relevant record.

Add the New Picklist Value

1. Navigate to Salesforce Setup, then open the Object Manager.

2. Find and select the Connection object.

3. Go to Fields & Relationships and click on the Connection Features (ADvendio__Connection_Features__c) field.

4. In the "Values" section, click New.

5. In the text box, enter the following value exactly as written: Master Slot Impressions Only

6. Click Save.

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How to Apply the Setting to Your Connection

Once the picklist value has been added, you can activate the feature for your Google Ad Manager connection.

1. Navigate to the Connection record for your Google Ad Manager instance.

2. Click Edit.

3. Find the Connection Features field and select the new Master Slot Impressions Only value from the picklist.
   
   

4. Click Save.

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From now on, any delivery reports scheduled for Campaign Items using this Connection will automatically use the new logic to import data for only the master creative, regardless of the Reporting Slots settings on the Ad Types.