Knowledge base
Castfire Support
Mike Walker April 09, 2012 • Tutorials and How-tos / Getting Started
Castfire provides a reporting & analytics tool which can be used to explore your data & account activity.
Following the steps below will let you answer questions such as:
- How many impressions did my content receive last month?
- What state & metropolitan region provides the bulk of my traffic?
- Does St. Louis mostly watch ads for Toyotas in the afternoon or late night?
An Example: "Impressions from California Cities Last Month"
For this example we'll be building a report to tell us how the traffic from California last month looked for each Metropolitan Area.
What we're after is something like:
| Day | Metro Area | Impressions |
| 2012-02-01 | Los Angeles | 123 |
| 2012-02-02 | Los Angeles | 145 |
| 2012-02-01 | San Francisco | 562 |
| 2012-02-02 | San Francisco | 899 |
1: Make sure you have access
If your account is an "Admin" then you already have access. Otherwise, ask your Admin to add "Report" rights to your account, or create an account for you with the "Reporting Only" role:
2: Click "Data Explorer" under the "Analytics" section on the left of the page
3: "Show Me": Select the data you'd like to summarize
For this example we'll report on "Impressions"
"Show Me" is the "What" of the question we're asking.
4: "For Every": Select how you'd like the data grouped & displayed
Additional fields can be added by clicking the + next to the field select input.
For this example we'll report on "Impression Date Day" and "Metro Area Name"
"For Every" is the "How" of the question we're asking.
For our example, we'll click the " + " to create another select input, and select "Metropolitan Area Name":
5: "If": Enter any constraints for this report
Such as a specific Channel or Geographic Location.
For this example we'll restrict results to the State of California
6: "For": Select the date range for this report
7: Click "Run Report"
Results!
8: Interactive Charts
If your report has a time-series field in it, an interactive chart will be created.
Any additional fields of your report are available as filters to control how the chart is displayed.
By default, the first value of each possible filter is pre-selected. So our example report on cities in California will display a chart representing only "Los Angeles", see the values change below by the selection of "San Francisco"
9: Browser-accessible Data
All data from the report is available for review in the browser, simply use the pagination ( "1", "2", ... "Next" ) links at the bottom of the page.
To download a file with all results click the link "CSV" below "Reports"
10: Save Report Template
If you wish to run this report again, or share it with others, click "Save As Report Template".
Give the report a name, and select "Fixed" or "Variable" where appropriate, as described below:
"Fixed" - This part of the report may not be modified when running a report
"Variable" - This part of the report may be changed each time the report is run.
Click "Save Report Template".
To run this report template in the future, and see all past results, go to "Report Templates" on the left side of the page.
Report templates can be used to create standard, repeatable reports that other users may execute.
You can also create users having permission to only run those reports that already exist, ensuring consistency & repeatability.
Randall Bennett February 22, 2011 • Tutorials and How-tos / Getting Started
Get a quick idea of how Castfire works with you, your CDN, and your content in this video.
Randall Bennett January 26, 2011 • Tutorials and How-tos / Advanced usage
We've just added a new feature to Castfire which allows you to group two or more campaigns together. Watch the video below for more info.