11.10 · Research / MediaINSIGHTS vision
One data layer. Two products. The engine in between.
The systems map for anyone stepping into the reporting stack mid-transition: what MediaINSIGHTS is today, what replaces what, where the Impact Engine surfaces, and the end state: one client door for performance, onboarding, and billing. Read this before the technical walkthrough; read 11.09, the MVP build brief, for what the vendor is contracted to ship.
The stack today
Four components, two audiences, one quirk: TapClicks plays two roles at once, feeding the data layer and delivering the client dashboards. Read left to right: data flows from sources, through sync, into the data layer, out to the reporting tools.
| Component | What it is, in plain terms first |
|---|---|
| RDS (AWS, PostgreSQL) | The one database all reporting reads from, hosted on AWS. Organized so every report slices the same numbers the same way: measurements live in fact tables, context like client, network, and date lives in dimension tables (the technical name for this layout is a snowflake schema). |
| Jasper | The internal reporting tool that sits on top of RDS. Where the team runs integrated omni-channel reporting and ad hocs across Linear TV, CTV, and Digital, plus Nielsen and TV performance, digital verification, and planning reports. |
| TapClicks | One product doing two jobs today: it collects most digital data (and feeds it into RDS), and it delivers the dashboards clients see. Digital runs slightly ahead of RDS in TapClicks; Linear and retail data flows the other way, pushed from RDS into TapClicks. |
| CDC | The automatic copy process that keeps RDS current: every change made in TapClicks or FileMaker is copied into RDS as it happens, no manual loads. (CDC stands for Change Data Capture.) |
| Fivetran POC | A managed data-pipeline service being trialed to take over TapClicks' collection job, so TapClicks can become dashboard-only. POC means proof of concept: a limited trial before committing. |
The future: two products, one shared data layer
The vision consolidates three things that are currently separate, Jasper's internal reporting, TapClicks' client dashboards, and manual reporting and email creation, into one system with a shared backend and audience-appropriate views on top.
| Today | Becomes |
|---|---|
| Jasper | → Media Analysis Tool, the new MediaINSIGHTS for internal reporting and ad hocs. |
| TapClicks dashboards | → New client-facing dashboard. Modern UI, streamlined, fully customizable per client, with two view modes: Diray internal and client. One tool, one permission toggle, instead of two separate systems. See 11.12 for the UX concept and working prototype. |
| TapClicks ingestion | → A dedicated ETL tool. Fivetran proof of concept underway. |
| Manual reporting emails | → Auto-generated, editable narrative: intro, cover letter, email body, then click to send. Teams internally, email to the client with an HTML snapshot and a live dashboard link. |
What this could look like: the daily experience
The connective tissue between the data layer and the client is net-new, and it is exactly where the Impact Engine plugs in. One screen, four moves, no strategist required to translate.
01 · Score
The read
Today's Media Impact Score per product, with trend. The question it answers: how well did today's media buy perform, not how much was spent.
02 · Why
The decomposition
Every score ships with its why: which factors moved it, placement diversity, daypart mix, audience alignment, digital channel performance.
03 · Narrative
The plain-English draft
LLM-generated summary of the score and the why, editable, in the voice a client actually reads. No spreadsheet required.
04 · Send
One action
Click to send: Teams internally, email to the client with an HTML snapshot and the live dashboard link. Reporting and client communication become one motion.
Where the engine sits in the measurement world
MMM
Tells you what happened last quarter.
Sales lift studies
Validate what a specific campaign flight drove.
The Impact Engine
Tells you what happened yesterday and what to adjust today. The operational scoring layer between strategic measurement and daily buying decisions.
- Principled statistics at the core. The scoring engine is rigorous and explainable. Not locked to one modeling approach: modular, adapting to the client's business, KPIs, and data availability. Different outcome signals may call for different models, gradient boosted methods for nonlinear interactions, time-series models for forecasting.
- AI sits above the core, not inside it. Automated narrative generation, anomaly detection flagging unusual score movements, AI agents monitoring model health and surfacing emerging patterns, and LLM-assisted media planning and competitive monitoring.
- The dashboard exposes it. The "recommendations and why" and auto-generated content features turn backend scoring logic into something a client or teammate reads and acts on directly.
The end state: one client door
The full picture goes beyond reporting. Eventually the client dashboard becomes the single place a client goes for everything: performance, onboarding, and billing. The underlying services may remain, Onboard is coming into use now for client onboarding and the finance stack is migrating to QuickBooks Online, but the client logs in to one platform, not three.
- The whole relationship, one login. Day one the client onboards here, every week they read performance here, every month they pay here. The portal covers the client lifecycle end to end, which is also a retention structure: the place a client goes daily is a place they do not leave.
- Sequencing takes care of itself. Onboard and QuickBooks Online give clients online onboarding and billing access they do not have today, standalone wins on their own. The portal then absorbs them as surfaces rather than replacing them, so no step depends on the end state arriving first.
- What it changes competitively. No agency in the set we track offers a single client platform spanning performance, onboarding, and payment. Custom Tableau dashboards are the category ceiling; one door for the whole engagement is a different category of client experience.
Why this page exists
Anyone joining this work steps into a system mid-transition: the data layer stays while ingestion may shift to a new ETL tool, Jasper becomes the Media Analysis Tool, TapClicks becomes the new client dashboard, the connective tissue, recommendations, generated narrative, one-click send, is net-new, and the horizon is a single client platform that also carries onboarding and billing. Understanding both the current stack and where it is headed is the prerequisite for the technical walkthrough. The companion page, 11.09, is the contract-grade version: what the MVP vendor is building, and what "done" means.