Building a Monthly Media Review Pack

A monthly review that consists of a dashboard walkthrough wastes the only hour in the month when commercial decisions can be made. A useful pack answers three questions and leaves the charts as supporting evidence.

Question one: did we deliver what was planned

Start with planned versus actual spend, by market and by channel, and explain any variance larger than the agreed tolerance. Delivery first, because every performance conclusion is conditional on how much was actually spent.

Question two: what did the money produce

Report the primary commercial measure agreed at planning stage, with a comparison against the previous period and against the target. Where the primary measure moved, show the two or three changes most likely to have caused it, drawn from the account rather than from general commentary.

Question three: what changes next month

Close with a short list of decisions required, each with a recommendation and an owner. This is the section that makes the meeting useful. A review that ends without decisions produces the same conversation the following month.

Keep the appendix separate

Put channel-by-channel detail, creative performance tables and platform screenshots in an appendix. Somebody will want them, but they should not occupy the discussion.

Write the summary before the charts

Drafting the three answers before building any visualisation forces the pack to stay focused. Charts assembled first tend to accumulate because each one seems interesting, and the argument gets lost among them.