What happens when your ad platform doesn’t have an API?

Marketing teams are increasingly investing in new advertising formats and platforms. TV, radio, local digital media, or even paid newsletters are part of the mix.

The problem arises when those platforms don’t offer an API to integrate directly with analytics tools. The consequence: manual reports in Excel that remain isolated and make it difficult to get a complete view of the investment.

Everyday pain

Let’s imagine a marketing team for a beverage brand. Part of their budget is allocated to TV campaigns. At the end of each month, the department receives an Excel file with rating, reach, and frequency metrics.
But when preparing the global media report, questions arise:

• How do I compare the cost per TV rating point with the cost per click of Google Ads?
• What was TV’s actual contribution to the campaign’s total cost per lead?
• What happens if I want to measure all platforms in a single currency or over the same time period?

The answer: hours of manual consolidation and the risk of errors.

The solution: integrate with Datasets without APIs

With Bunker DB’s Datasets module, marketing teams can easily integrate platforms without an API:

• File upload: you upload the Excel or CSV file downloaded from the platform.
• Automatic normalization: you unify metrics, dates, and currencies so that “impressions,” “clicks,” or “rating” all speak the same language.
• Unified view: the dataset is combined with data that arrives via native connections (e.g., Meta, Google, TikTok), resulting in a single dashboard with all media.

Practical case: TV + Paid Media

Let’s go back to the example of the beverage brand. Now, instead of having a standalone Excel file, the team uploads the TV reports to a dataset that already includes Google and Meta metrics.
In minutes, they can calculate:

• The total cost per lead, across all platforms.
• The actual contribution of each medium to conversion.
• Which medium was most efficient in metrics such as impressions, reach, or clicks?

The result: faster, more comprehensive, and actionable analysis.

Conclusion

The fact that a platform doesn’t have an API shouldn’t hold your team back. With Datasets, you can integrate any data source—manual or automated—and analyze it alongside your digital investment in one place.

Turn your manual reports into smart decisions. Discover how Bunker DB Datasets can unify all your data, even those without an API.