How to create a custom report

Raya sets up around ten system reports for you the first time you open an ad account — top spending ads, top performing creatives, top performing video hooks and so on — and honestly, they answer most of the questions people bring us. A custom report is for the question they don't answer: your question, about your segment.

Here's how we'd build one.

Thirty seconds on this, because the difference isn't signposted anywhere and it explains a whole category of confusion.

System reports are the ones Atria builds for you — Top spend ads and its siblings.

You can tell you're in one from the breadcrumb: Brand name / System reports / Top spend ads. Each carries its own standing description explaining what it's for.

They're quick, they're sensible, and they're fixed: open Top spend ads and you'll find Group by Ad name greyed out, because that grouping is part of what the report is.

So if you've ever tried to change the grouping and found the control dead, that's the reason — it isn't a bug and you haven't lost a permission.

Custom reports are yours. The breadcrumb reads Brand name / Custom reports / Report name, and everything in one is editable — grouping, filters, metrics, date range, the lot.

Which to reach for: a system report when the question is a standard one and you want the answer in ten seconds.

A custom report the moment you want to change how the data is cut — in practice, the second you find yourself wishing you could group it differently, you want a custom report. And "fixed" doesn't mean "stuck": a system report can still be shared as a snapshot, so you can send one to a client without rebuilding it.

Go to Analytics & Launch, pick the ad account you want, and open the Reports tab. In the Custom reports area, click the + button.

A brand-new report arrives called Untitled, with an Add description… placeholder under the title and a breadcrumb along the top reading Brand name / Custom reports / Report name.

worth a glance once you have a few on the go and they all start to look alike.

You'll get a report with sensible defaults already in place — the last 14 days, grouped by Ad name, no filter, sorted by highest spend. That's your starting canvas, not your answer. The date range isn't capped at a month or a quarter, incidentally — Last 365 days and Overall are both there if you want a long look back. Everything from here is you narrowing it down.

This is the bit we'd slow down on, because it's the decision that shapes everything else: your Group by setting decides what one row in the report actually is.

Group by Ad name and a row is an ad. Group by Creative asset and a row is an image or a video — so the same video running across five ads collapses into one honest line, which is usually what you want when you're judging creative rather than delivery. You can also group by Copy, Headline (Meta), Landing page, Campaign name, Ad set name (or Ad group name on TikTok), Ad format or Custom tag.

Our rule of thumb: if you're asking "which ad is winning?", group by ad name. If you're asking "which creative is winning?", group by creative asset. People conflate the two constantly and then wonder why the numbers don't match Ads Manager. There's more detail in Group-by options in Analytics reports.

The toolbar above a report is short: the date range (Last 14 days to begin with), Group by, and two filter buttons. Dimension filter covers things about the ad — campaign name, ad name, ad format, ad status, launch time, custom tags. Metric filter covers the numbers — spend, ROAS, CPA and so on. Each opens its own modal, headed Dimension filter records and Metric filter records, and both give you + Add filter rule, Add filter group, Clear all, Cancel and Apply.

A dimension rule reads Where → Launch time → is → your value. A metric rule reads Where → Spend → > → the number you type, with a small box for the unit, and its operator dropdown is symbols rather than words: >, ≥, <, ≤, =, ≠. Nobody has ever needed teaching what ≥ means, which is more than we can say for is at least.

Since Advanced Filters landed you can group conditions inside either one. Rules go in one at a time with + Add filter rule; Add filter group — the button with the small panel icon — drops in a nested box, indented and orange-bordered, with its own Where row and its own + Add filter rule, joined to the rules above it by an And dropdown. That is how you build something like (Summer Sale Or Back to School) And (Video Or Carousel) in a single filter, rather than building three views and reconciling them in a spreadsheet afterwards. Groups combine with And, so each one narrows further, and they nest one level deep.

This is also the answer to "can I report on only my creator ads?" — filter Ad name contains whatever marks a creator ad in your naming (UGC, a creator's initials), and you've got it. If your team names ads to a structure, set up a naming convention once and each segment becomes its own filterable dimension — see Turn your ad naming conventions into insights.

While we are here: there is no search box in Reports. If you want one specific ad or creative, you filter on Ad name rather than typing into a search bar. We would argue that is the better habit anyway — a filter is something you can save, share and come back to, whereas a search is something you type again tomorrow.

And if you'd rather not click at all: describe the segment to Raya in plain English — "show me ads in the Summer Sale or Back to School campaigns that are video or carousel, build an Analytics report" — and she'll build the grouped filter and save it to your report.

Click + Add metric on the chip row above the chart — each metric you add becomes a coloured chip with an × to take it off again — or open Custom columns → Customize table columns for the full table. Column presets are the quick route if you always look at the same set. Full detail in How to add metrics in Analytics reports.

The view switcher sits at the right-hand end of the metric row and carries three icons: bar chart (comparison), line chart (trend over time) and card/grid view (creative preview next to the numbers — our favourite for creative reviews). The table sits underneath whichever you pick, so you never lose the detail. Click any table row to open that ad's detail view, with breakdowns by age, gender and platform.

If what you actually want is "compare these three or four groups against each other" — UGC vs studio vs static, say — a filter won't quite do it. That's what custom groups are for: see Define custom groups in Analytics reports.

Reports don't save themselves. What you change — group by, filters, metrics, date range — is held as unsaved changes until you click Save, and you'll be warned if you try to leave the report with changes outstanding. Worth knowing before you spend twenty minutes building something. It's the orange button in the report header; alongside it sit Share report, a … overflow menu, your Default attribution setting and a Synced an hour ago indicator that tells you how fresh the numbers are — that last one settles a surprising number of arguments about why a figure looks off.

Once it's saved you can share a link (your recipient doesn't need a seat), export to CSV for offline work, or take a Snapshot if you want a fixed version people can comment on — which is what most agencies we work with send to clients. CSV is the export format, incidentally — there's no PDF export from a report.

A snapshot opens with the report name, a Snapshot created by line, a Copy link button and a … menu, and it restates the frozen date range, the grouping and sort (Group by Ad name; Sort by Spend desc) and the attribution setting under the title, so nobody has to ask what they are looking at. Commenting is live: a Comments panel runs down the right-hand side with an Add a comment… box, which is where client feedback ought to live rather than in a separate email thread.

One detail worth understanding before somebody queries it. Beneath the chart a snapshot states its own scope, along the lines of 8 results (Color formatting based on 420 results). The eight rows are what you shared; the 420 are the full set the colour formatting was judged against. That is why a shared snapshot can quite legitimately show fewer rows than the report it came from.

We'd rather tell you now than have you hunt for the button. A report covers one ad account — there's no single report spanning several accounts yet. And there's no period-over-period comparison, so comparing this month against last still means switching the date range. Both are on the roadmap; if either one is blocking you, tell us and we'll add your name to it, which genuinely does move things along.

If you'd like a hand building your first one — or you've got a question and aren't sure which report shape answers it — just shout. Happy to build it with you on a call.