The month's spend, results and recommendations, as a dashboard your client can open in any browser.
The example on this page is one month of paid social results, from an imaginary agency to an imaginary outdoor brand. It covers ads only, so treat it as a model for structure. A full marketing report might add search, email and organic in the same pattern.
Who it's for
Agency account managers and freelance marketers who report to a client every month, plus in-house marketers who report to a founder or a board. If you currently paste charts from Meta Ads Manager into slides, or send a spreadsheet nobody opens, this format is for you.
It works when the person reading wants the answer more than the raw data. They should be able to glance at it on a phone between meetings and know whether the month went well.
What a good one contains
Open the sample and read it from top to bottom. It takes about a minute, and that's deliberate.
- Four numbers at the top. Spend, revenue from ads, return on ad spend and purchases, each with its change from August. A client who stops reading here still knows how the month went.
- The reporting period, stated up front. "Sep 1–30, compared with August" removes any argument about which dates the figures cover.
- A chart with a sentence above it. "Purchases rose every week since the trail shoe launch" says what the bars mean. A chart without that sentence leaves the client to work it out, or to ask you on a call.
- A table of campaigns. Spend, purchases and return side by side show where the money did its work. Here, brand video returns 2.05 while cart retargeting returns 6.91, and nobody needs that explained.
- What you'd change next. This is the part clients pay for. "Move $3K from brand video to trail shoes" is a decision they can approve today, and its reason sits right beside it.
- Fewer metrics than you have. Impressions, reach and frequency aren't here. Keep them for the conversation if someone asks.
Because it's a web page, the chart can do things a PDF can't. The sample has a "Show as a table" option, so anyone who prefers exact figures can get them with a click.
Make yours from your own numbers
Export your data from the ad platform or your analytics tool, then paste it into a Claude conversation with the prompt on this page. CSV works well. Name the client, the period and the one thing that mattered most this month, because that context shapes the story the page tells.
Then check it the way a sceptical client would. Compare every total with your source, since a wrong number costs more trust than a plain design ever will. Ask for changes in ordinary language: "put revenue first", "drop the rain shell row", "use their brand colours". Write the recommendations yourself, or at least rewrite them, since they should sound like your judgement about this client.
Next month, update the same page instead of publishing a new one. Your client keeps one bookmark, and you avoid the "which version is current?" email.
