Everyone in the ad tech industry knows what a dashboard is. And everyone knows what a report is. And yet, I’ve seen both terms used interchangeably too many times. Or even worst, sometimes reports are associated with exports.

Why the confusion then? I believe because many BI tools have become so flexible, that adding more details to the dashboard can quickly transform it into a report, and oversimplifying a report will make it a dashboard.

Dashboards and reports might seem similar, but they are the opposite.

A dashboard is a one screen page. A report can be multiple pages. A dashboard displays essential information. A report shows a detailed data set.

A dashboard is being used for monitoring data at a glance and making quick decisions. A report is for decisions that require lots of inputs.

This was a too long intro for my new Dashboard. It shows the top 5 posts according to MailChimp.

If you want to build your MailChimp dashboard you can find the source code that powers mine here.

Leo Celis