Looker Studio Dashboard Agency

The short answer

Tack Media builds Looker Studio dashboards that answer specific business questions, using blended data from ads, analytics, the CRM and the warehouse. We design the questions first, build the data layer underneath, and maintain it. Engagements start at $5,000 a month.

What we actually do with Looker Studio

A dashboard is not a deliverable. A dashboard that changes a decision is. Most reports we inherit have forty charts and no argument, and the meeting still runs on a spreadsheet someone builds by hand every Monday.

• Define the questions. Written down before any chart is placed. What are we spending, what did it return, which channels are working, what changed this week, and what should we do about it. Four or five questions, not forty charts.
• Build the data layer. Native connectors where they suffice, and a warehouse or scheduled extract where they do not. Blending inside Looker Studio has limits, so a lot of the real work happens upstream of the report.
• Blend spend with outcome. Ad platform cost joined to GA4 behaviour and HubSpot or Salesforce revenue, on a consistent date and channel definition. Getting those definitions to agree is most of the job.
• Handle the freshness problem. Cache windows differ by connector and a dashboard that looks stale destroys trust faster than one that is wrong. We set expectations in the report itself with a visible last-updated stamp.
• Client and multi-brand templating. One report parameterised across accounts rather than thirty copies that drift apart within a quarter.
• Written commentary. Where it helps, generated with Claude against the period’s numbers and reviewed by a human before anyone reads it.

What it connects to

Where teams get stuck

Data freshness is not a setting you can always change. Google’s documentation is specific: Google Marketing products including Google Ads, Campaign Manager 360, Search Console and YouTube Analytics refresh every 12 hours only, and that interval is not adjustable, while Google Analytics offers 1, 4 or 12 hours with 12 as the default and Sheets defaults to 15 minutes. A manual refresh has a one-minute cooldown. Anyone expecting a live view of this morning’s spend is going to be disappointed, and the fix is a warehouse, not a checkbox.

Blending is doing work the warehouse should do. Joins performed inside a report are recalculated on every view, which is why a heavily blended dashboard takes thirty seconds to load and then times out in a client meeting. Moving the join upstream into BigQuery or a scheduled extract fixes both the speed and the definitional arguments.

Channel definitions do not agree, so neither do the numbers. GA4 assigns traffic by mechanical rule. Direct requires source exactly (direct) with medium (not set) or (none), Referral requires medium of referral, app or link, and Unassigned appears when no rule matches. Ad platforms count conversions on their own basis with their own windows. Put both on one chart without reconciling the definitions and the dashboard generates arguments rather than settling them.

Attribution moves after the report was screenshotted. GA4 supports data-driven attribution and can reattribute conversions for up to 7 days after the conversion. Last week’s number changing is expected behaviour. A dashboard that does not state its attribution model and lookback window invites a monthly dispute.

How it works — 1, 2, 3

1. Audit and access, week 1. Existing reports, data sources, who reads them and which decisions they inform. Often the honest finding is that three of the five reports are never opened.
2. Build and connect, week 2 to 5. Question list agreed, data layer built, connectors and extracts configured, report designed, definitions documented on the page itself so nobody has to ask what a metric means.
3. Run and report, ongoing. Maintenance when a platform changes a field, new views as the questions change, and a monthly review where we present the numbers rather than emailing a link.

What it costs

Tack Media engagements start at $5,000 a month. What moves the number: how many data sources, whether a warehouse has to be built, how many brands or accounts are templated, and whether we present the numbers monthly or only supply the report.

Looker Studio itself is described by Google as a no-cost tool for turning data into shareable dashboards and reports. Looker Studio Pro is sold separately by Google for teams needing managed assets and support, and warehouse costs such as BigQuery are billed by Google on your own account. This work usually runs alongside paid media and CRO and marketing systems.

Questions we get asked

What should a dashboard actually answer?

Five things: what we spent, what it returned, which channel changed, what is trending the wrong way, and what needs a decision this week. Everything else is a supporting chart, and most supporting charts should be on a second page.

Who owns the report?

You do. Reports and data sources live in your Google account with your team as owners. We are added as editors. If we part ways we are removed and the report keeps working.

Can we take it in-house later?

Yes. We document each data source, name fields consistently and hand over the calculation logic. The upstream warehouse work is documented too, since that is the part people forget to ask for.

Do you work with our existing reports?

Usually. We prefer to fix what exists, because people already know where things are. We rebuild when the underlying data model makes the current report unfixable.

Why not just use the platform dashboards?

Because each platform reports its own contribution favourably and none of them see your revenue. A blended report on one date and channel basis is the only place the comparison is fair.

The bottom line

Looker Studio is free and capable, and the difficulty is never the charts. It is the data underneath, the freshness windows and getting every source to agree on what a channel and a conversion mean.

If your reporting takes a day a week and still gets argued with, book a call with a Tack Media expert or phone 310-620-1141.

Sources

• Google — Looker Studio: Manage data freshness
• Google — Looker Studio documentation
• Google Analytics Help — Default channel group
• Google Analytics Help — Get started with attribution