Blog
Field notes from the Level team
Product updates, performance-marketing playbooks, and the occasional rant about ad-platform APIs.
- marketing-reporting-software
Marketing Reporting Software: What DTC Brands and Agencies Actually Need
A buyer's guide to marketing reporting software for DTC brands and agencies: why ad-platform dashboards structurally disagree, the five criteria that separate real reporting tools from chart generators, and what changes when a client is watching the same numbers you are.
Read article - marketing-kpi-dashboard
Marketing KPI Dashboard: The Metrics That Predict Revenue (and the Ones That Don't)
Most DTC marketing dashboards pile on forty tiles and bury the one number that decides whether the brand survives the quarter. This is the operator's separation: the four KPIs — contribution margin, CAC, LTV:CAC, and blended MER — that actually predict revenue, the five vanity metrics led by platform ROAS that don't, and how short a marketing KPI dashboard should actually be.
Read article - ltv-by-cohort
LTV by Cohort: The Math Most DTC Dashboards Get Wrong
The cohort LTV math we use on DTC reporting engagements: why blended LTV lies to founders, the three mistakes that inflate the number (extrapolated 365-day LTV, cumulative vs unit revenue, ignoring decay curve shape), the 30/60/90/180/365-day table structure, and which cohort metric to watch first by revenue stage.
Read article - ecommerce-analytics
Ecommerce Analytics: The Reporting Stack That Reconciles to Shopify
Ecommerce analytics done right anchors every revenue number back to Shopify's order ledger instead of what Meta, Google, and TikTok each claim to have driven. This is the operator's build: why platform-summed numbers structurally overstate revenue, the four metrics that actually decide profitability, how cross-channel deduplication works against a shared key, and the three-job dashboard layer most stacks get wrong.
Read article - automated-reporting-tools
Automated Reporting Tools for DTC Agencies: 6 Compared (2026)
Automated reporting tools promise to kill the Friday-afternoon number-pulling ritual — but most automate deck assembly, which was never where the hours went. Here's where time actually disappears (reconciliation and connector-fixing), six tools compared by automation depth, and the four questions to ask a vendor before you sign.
Read article - agency-reporting
Agency Report Template: 21 Items DTC Clients Actually Need
The monthly report structure we use on Marketing Bar client reports, copied here in full: 21 items across six required panels (led by revenue reconciliation), three conditional diagnostics, and the 8 vanity metrics the template deliberately cuts. Editable Sheet / Notion / Looker copy shared on request.
Read article - cross-channel-dashboard
Cross-Channel Marketing Dashboard for DTC: Tooling Compared
Cross-channel dashboards promise one honest revenue number across paid, email, and commerce — but most just aggregate what the ad platforms self-report. Here's the four-tier landscape (deck builders, aggregators, Looker DIY, enterprise), the five-question test that separates real dedup from a presentation layer, and where Level fits today.
Read article - agency-dashboard
Agency Dashboard Tools Compared: Whatagraph vs AgencyAnalytics vs Looker (and Where Level Fits)
We compare the agency dashboard tools DTC operators actually run on — Whatagraph, AgencyAnalytics, Looker Studio, and Funnel.io — on cost, data freshness, and the failure modes nobody prices in. Plus where Level fits and six criteria that point you to the right one.
Read article - agency-reporting
Why Most Agency Reports Lie (And What To Show Instead)
DTC founders keep handing us 20-slide agency decks built on impressions, blended ROAS, and double-counted revenue. Here are the five lies on almost every report — and the shorter, honest dashboard to demand instead.
Read article - product
Why we built Level
Most performance teams stitch ad reports together with spreadsheets and prayer. Here's the cleaner path.
Read article