An advertising dashboard should answer one question every week: for each ad platform, what did we spend and what did it produce in booked calls and won work. Ad platforms report clicks and their own idea of conversions. Your business runs on revenue. This article answers how to build a dashboard in the levelpartner.ai platform that puts ad spend next to pipeline outcomes from your own CRM, so you stop judging ads by numbers the ad platform chose.
Why ad platform reports are not enough
Each ad platform counts conversions its own way, credits itself generously and has no idea which leads became clients. Add the figures from two or three platforms together and you will usually count more conversions than you actually received. None of them see the sales call, the proposal or the signed contract.
The fix is to measure outcomes in one place, your CRM, and bring spend in beside it. When the dashboard pulls spend from the ad accounts and results from Opportunities, you get one honest view of what each pound or dollar bought.
Before you start
- Your ad accounts connected from Settings, so spend can appear in Reporting.
- UTM parameters on every ad link, using one naming convention.
- Forms and calendars that store UTM values on the contact.
- A pipeline where won opportunities carry a value.
How to set it up
- Agree a UTM naming rule and write it down for anyone who builds ads.
- Check each live ad link carries source, medium and campaign values.
- Go to Settings, then Integrations, and connect Google Ads and Facebook.
- Go to Dashboard and open the Dashboard Selection Menu.
- Click + Add Dashboard, enter a Dashboard Name and click Confirm.
- Click + Add a widget manually and pick Amount Spent from Meta Ads.
- Add Total cost from the Google Ads section.
- Add Contacts by Source, with First Attribution under Conditions.
- Add Won Opportunity Value with First Attribution, grouped by Session Source.
- Click Save, then Save Changes to keep the layout.
- Use the Date Picker to set seven days plus a comparison range.
- Open the Action Menu and use Manage permissions for budget approvers.
What the dashboard is for
For a 10 to 250 person firm, ads are often the one marketing cost that can be turned up or down quickly. That makes them the first place an owner looks when revenue stalls, and the first place money is wasted when the reporting is weak. A dashboard that shows cost per booked call and cost per won client per platform lets you move budget on evidence rather than on which platform's report looked best.
It also exposes campaigns that generate leads the sales team will not touch. A platform with cheap leads and no booked calls is not cheap.
Take one month with made-up figures. Platform A costs £4,000 and produces 80 leads, 12 booked calls and one won client worth £9,000. Platform B costs £3,000 and produces 30 leads, 14 booked calls and three won clients worth £27,000. On cost per lead, A wins: £50 against £100. On cost per booked call, B wins: about £214 against £333. If those numbers held for a few months, the case would be to shift budget towards B and tighten targeting on A.
What it replaces
It replaces logging into each ad platform on a Monday and copying numbers into a spreadsheet. It also replaces the monthly report from whoever runs your ads, which usually shows the metrics they control. You can keep that report, but your own dashboard becomes the reference point.
Time it takes
Setup takes two to three hours if UTMs are already in place, a day if they are not. The weekly review takes 15 minutes. Do not change budgets based on a single week, because one booked call more or less can swing the numbers. Make budget moves monthly and use the weekly view to catch broken links or paused campaigns.
The mistake most people make
Judging ads on the date the lead arrived rather than the date the deal closed. In a service business with a 30-day or longer sales cycle, this month's spend produces next month's revenue. Compare won value against spend from the previous period, or use a rolling three-month view.
When not to use it
If you spend very little on ads, say a few hundred a month on one platform, a full dashboard is more than you need. Check that platform's leads against booked calls once a month. A dashboard also cannot fix missing UTMs. If more than a small share of contacts arrive with no source, fix tagging first, or every widget will undercount.
For the logic behind crediting a sale to an ad, read ad attribution. The broader paid view lives in the performance marketing dashboard. If you advertise on several channels at once, cross channel attribution explains how to avoid counting the same client twice.
Troubleshooting
Spend shows zero for a platform you know is running. The account connection has expired or was made by someone who has since left. Reconnect it from Settings using a current admin login.
Leads appear under "unknown" source. The ad link lacks UTM values, or the landing page form does not capture them. Click the live ad, submit a test form and check the contact record.
Won value is attributed to the wrong platform. The contact clicked several ads over time. Decide whether the dashboard uses first source or latest source, and label the widget accordingly.
Numbers differ from the ad platform's own report. That is expected. Your dashboard counts contacts and deals in your CRM. The ad platform counts its own events.
Frequently asked questions
Which ad platforms can feed spend into the dashboard?
Connect the ad accounts available under integrations in Settings. Where a platform cannot be connected, record its monthly spend manually and compare it by hand.
Should the dashboard show cost per lead?
Show it, but lower on the screen. Put cost per booked call and won value per platform at the top, where the eye lands first.
How do I handle long sales cycles?
Use a rolling 90-day window for won value, or compare each month's spend with the following month's revenue. Short windows make every channel look worse than it is.
Who should own the dashboard?
Whoever approves ad budgets. If the person who runs the ads also owns the dashboard, nobody independent checks the numbers.