Why Most OTT Reporting Is Useless (And What to Ask For)

4min read

Why Most OTT Reporting Is Useless (And What to Ask For)

Most OTT reports look impressive. Clean dashboards. Big numbers. Fancy graphs.

But here’s the ugly truth: most of them are designed to confuse. They hide more than they reveal. They look smart to keep you from asking real questions.

We’re not here for that.

We’re going to break down the do’s, the don’ts, and the straight-up WTFs of OTT reporting—with real examples from the trenches.

1. Start With the Basics. But Make Them Clear.

Let’s look at a clean campaign summary. Real campaign. Real numbers. Real clarity:

Real reporting from Adduro. No fluff, just clean, contextual metrics that actually matter.

You get:

Total impressions
Actual reach
Frequency (how often your ad hit the same household)
VCR (Video Completion Rate)

But here’s the catch: all of these numbers mean nothing if the definitions behind them are fuzzy. Is reach based on IPs? Users? Devices? If your vendor can’t tell you instantly, that’s a red flag.

2. When VCR Becomes a Vanity Metric

Here’s how competitors often show off their “amazing” completion rates:

This isn’t performance. It’s pageantry. High VCR with no fraud filtering? That’s not smart—it’s safe.

Notice anything?

Multiple charts saying the same thing
Completion rate is sky-high—because it has to be (you can’t skip CTV ads)
Zero insight on where fraud or non-CTV delivery might be hiding

It’s fluff. Pretty fluff. But fluff.

This is how it should be done. VCR broken out by app and campaign—so you can actually see what’s working and what’s wasting your budget.

Unlike most vendors who bury performance in blended averages, we break VCR out by app, publisher, and campaign.

Why? Because that’s how you actually spot fraud, non-CTV delivery, or underperforming inventory.

If your report can’t show this, it’s not reporting… it’s theater.

3. Time-of-Day Reporting: Obscured On Purpose

Now let’s talk dayparting. Competitor reports love vague visualizations like this:

What does this even tell you? Broad buckets with no numbers. No scale. No decisions can come from this.

A colorful distraction. This chart looks precise but says nothing about performance or timing.

What do you actually learn from these? Nothing.

No hourly data
No real context
Just colorful distractions

4. Daily Data Should Mean Something

Vendors love to break things down by day… but without scale. Check this out:

Looks detailed, but hides the truth. When everything’s over 98% and there’s no scale, it’s just noise.

See the problem? Sure, they tell you completion rates are consistent, but:

There’s no Y-axis for starts
Everything is within 1%
It’s meaningless noise dressed up as optimization

This is what real pacing looks like. Simple, direct, actionable.

Now contrast that with this.

We don’t pretend 0.3% changes in VCR are revelations. We show you exactly how your campaign delivered, by day of the week.

You see real pacing. Real distribution. And real opportunities to optimize.

Full-month transparency. Built for smarter decisions.

And we don’t stop at weekly summaries.

This is how we show you full-month pacing — day by day, no black box.

You’ll know exactly where your spend went, which days overdelivered, and where optimizations should land next time.

5. Reports Should Help You Decide

Your data isn’t for decoration. It’s for decisions.

That’s why Adduro reports are built to surface anomalies, not hide them. Every number is contextual. Every chart is actionable. And every campaign is customized—because no two advertisers care about the same exact metrics.

If your OTT report isn’t helping you find problems or improve performance, then it’s just there to keep you quiet.

And that’s a problem.

Final Thought: Bad reporting wastes your money. Great reporting helps you spend it smarter.

We’re here for the latter. And the next parts, we’ll go even deeper.

Until then: kill the fluff. Demand clarity. Get smarter.