Goals Overview

About Goals

The Goals module is the predictive analytics product in TapClicks that enables marketers, advertisers, and Ad Ops teams to proactively monitor and visually track the progress of campaigns. Goals enable users to mitigate risk as part of their overall marketing strategy by indicating proactively whether the campaigns are on-target or off-pace, in terms of ad spend or other performance metrics.  It empowers users to decide on whether to continue, pause, or tweak campaigns with a visual tracker and performance metrics. Goals can highlight the gap between current campaign performance and desired future campaign performance.

 

With goals you can do the following:

• Prescribe targets for each campaign
• Visualize the progress of a campaign on a weekly, monthly, quarterly or customized recurring basis
• Forecast the performance of a campaign
• Track and justify return on ad spend (ROAS)

 

Navigate to Goals

Log in to TapClicks and, on the Reports menu, click Goals.

 

The Goals Overview Page

1] Goal List View

• Displays all defined goals with information such as the goal name, time frame, and performance metrics.
• Important: The default view for completed goals only shows results for the past 7 days. If a completed goal is missing:
  Click Advanced Filters (3) and adjust the date range to include the desired time period.

2] Search Bar

Use this search field to quickly locate goals by name or keyword.

 

3] Advanced Filters

Click this button to customize your view of the Goals list.
↓ Click to read more about Advanced Filters in this article. 

 

4] Goal Name View Selector

Switch between saved views or set custom filters for better organization.

 

5] Action Buttons

• Add Goal ( + icon): Create a new goal

• Download All Goals (↓ icon): Export the current list of goals

• Bulk Upload Goals(↑ icon): Upload multiple goals from an external file. A template is provided.

 

6] Pagination and Display Settings

Control the number of goals shown per page and navigate between multiple pages if available.

 

7] More Options (i.e. three dots icon)

Click this icon next to a goal for additional actions:

• Edit: Modify the selected goal
• Duplicate: Create a copy of the goal
• Delete: Remove the goal from the list
• View Audit Logs: See a history of changes made to the goal
• Set Alert: Provide system-generated email alerts for your data. (↓Click to read more about Goal Alerts in this article. )

 

Managing Displayed Goals with Advanced Filters

The Advanced Filters feature allows you to customize your view by narrowing down the list of goals based on specific criteria. This is especially useful when searching for completed goals outside the default 7-day timeframe or analyzing goals by performance metrics.

Filter Options:

• Goal Amount: Set a range for the minimum and maximum goal amounts to display.
• Days Left: Filter goals based on the number of days remaining until their deadline.
• Goal Status: Select a specific status (e.g., Complete, In Progress) or include all.
• Goal Type: Focus on a particular type of goal, such as spend, clicks, or conversions.
• Goal Performance: Highlight goals that are on track, off track, or have another custom performance label.
• Repeating Goal: Specify whether to include repeating goals in your results.
• Associated To: Narrow down goals assigned to a particular account, campaign, or integration.
• Data Category: Focus on specific categories like Facebook Ads, Google Ads, or another integrated data source.
• Goal Variance: Filter for goals that are either over-delivering, under-delivering, or both.
• Variance Range: Define a numerical range for the acceptable variance percentage from the target.

Tips for Using Advanced Filters:

• If you’re searching for a goal that was recently completed but doesn’t appear, extend the Date Range under Goal Status to include an earlier timeframe.
• Combine multiple filters for more specific results, such as filtering by both performance status and associated account.

 

Important Features for Goal Creation

When it comes to creating goals, today users can create two categories of goal metrics: 

1. Budget: Track and forecast ad spend or cost over a period of time.
2. Pacing: Track and forecast impressions or clicks over a period of time.
3. Calculated: Track metrics like CPC or CPM against a target.

 

Goal Durations

Goals give users the flexibility of creating two types of goals based on the duration of the prescribed goal: 

• Non-Recurring: The goal is defined for a fixed period of time, For example, if you want to track and forecast a Google Ads campaign performance for one month (from Jan 1, 2023 to Jan 31, 2023), then you can set it as a non-recurring goal.
  
  
• Recurring: The goal is defined over a recurring time period depending on the duration of the campaign. For example, if you want to track and forecast a Google Ads campaign performance for over three months (from Jan 1, 2025 to March 31, 2025), then you can set it as a recurring monthly goal. The duration options for setting a recurring goal are days, weeks, months, quarters, and years. This gives you the flexibility to set the campaign as per your campaign cycle.

 

Associating Goals with User Groups

Goals can be associated with different groups of users based on how you’ve configured the platform. Goals can be associated with the following groups:

• A single client
• A client group
• A business unit
• Instance-wide to associate the goal with all that use the data source

 

Data Category

The Goals module enables users to set up goals from three different datasets from the TapClicks Data Warehouse. They are as follows:

• Data Source 
• Channel
• Smart Campaign (on certain feature packages). If you’d like to learn more about Smart Campaigns, please contact your Customer Success Manager. 

 

Defining Performance Goals

The Goals interface helps you visualize the progress of your goals at a glance using in-built visual elements, as shown in the example below. You can define performance thresholds to track towards an acceptable range over a time period.

 

Examples of Goals

Example 1: The below image depicts the visual for a goal that is yet to start. 

 

Example 2: The below image depicts the visual for a goal that is currently in progress for Feb 2023 and is pacing as expected (On Track).

 

Example 3: The below image depicts the visual for a goal that is currently in progress and pacing within an acceptable range (Within Threshold).

 

Example 4: The below image depicts the visual for a goal that is currently in progress and is not pacing as forecasted (Off Track).

 

Legend

• Visualize progress of a campaign on a monthly basis or recurring basis
• Forecast the performance of a campaign
• Track and justify return on ad spend (ROAS)