Looker Studio (Data Studio) Reporting Dashboards

Looker Studio is now Data Studio

Google announced in April 2026 that Looker Studio is being renamed Data Studio, the name it carried until 2022. According to Google's announcement on its Developers forum, Looker Studio Pro becomes Data Studio Pro. Reports, data sources and sharing carried over automatically. Many people still search for Looker Studio, so we use both names, but it is the same free tool.

dijitul marketing builds dashboards in it from £145 + VAT one-off. The fixed price depends on how many data sources and pages you need. We build in your Google account so you own the report and can share it with anyone by link.

What goes on a good marketing dashboard

A dashboard should answer a few questions in seconds. We agree those questions first, then design around them. Most of our marketing dashboards have:

• An overview page: spend, leads or sales, cost per result and return on ad spend for the period, compared with the previous period and last year.
• A channel page: results by source, such as Google Ads, Meta, email, organic search and direct.
• A campaign page: spend and results per campaign, so you can see which to scale and which to cut.
• A website page: landing pages with the most key events, and device split.

We leave out vanity metrics such as impressions unless they help explain a change. One honest page beats ten pages of charts.

Connecting the data

Third-party connectors carry their own subscription fee, paid to the provider. Where a free route through Google Sheets is reliable enough, we will suggest it. Data blending lets us join ad spend with GA4 leads on date and campaign, which is how cost per lead is calculated across platforms.

Avoiding the GA4 quota errors

The GA4 connector uses the GA4 Data API, and Google limits how many API tokens a property can use per hour and per day. A busy report with many charts, viewed by several people, can run out, and charts then show errors until the quota resets. Because the quota is shared at property level, one heavy report can affect others.

We design with that in mind: fewer, better charts per page, sensible default date ranges, and data extracts or a BigQuery export for heavier reporting. For larger accounts, GA4's free BigQuery export can feed the dashboard without touching the Data API quota at all.

Dashboards for clients, teams and boards

Different people need different views. A business owner wants one screen: what did we spend, what did we get, is it getting better? A marketing assistant needs campaign detail to decide what to change this week. A board wants a quarterly trend and a short explanation. We build one report with pages for each audience, rather than three separate reports that drift apart.

Filters let people narrow the view without breaking anything: by channel, by campaign, by device or by a service line if you sell several. Viewers get view-only access, so nobody accidentally deletes a chart. If you run a franchise or several locations, we can add a location filter fed from GA4 or your CRM, so each branch sees its own numbers alongside the group total.

Making the numbers agree

Google Ads, Meta and GA4 rarely report the same totals. Each uses its own attribution model, its own conversion window and its own view of consent. We explain those differences in the dashboard itself, with a short note on each page, and choose one source as the main record for leads or sales, usually GA4 or your CRM.

A dashboard is only as good as the tracking behind it. If key events or ad conversions are wrong, we will recommend fixing them first through conversion tracking, so the report shows the truth rather than just looking tidy.

What you get

• A short discovery call to agree the few numbers that matter
• A dashboard built in your Google account in Looker Studio (Data Studio)
• Data sources connected: GA4, Google Ads, Search Console, and others as agreed
• Calculated fields for cost per lead, cost per sale and return on ad spend
• Date comparisons (month on month and year on year) and channel filters
• Quota-friendly page design for GA4
• A walkthrough and a short written guide

How it works and what it costs

Google Ads management from £150 a month, social media management from £125 a month and email marketing from £95 a month, all + VAT. Ad spend is separate and paid to the platform. No long contracts.

1. Free review

   We look at your current ads, social, email and analytics, or your plans if you are starting out, and tell you plainly what we would change.

2. Plan and price

   You get a written plan with targets, budgets and a fixed monthly fee before anything starts.

3. Set up properly

   Tracking and consent first, then campaigns, audiences, content calendars or email flows, all in accounts you own.

4. Run and improve

   We manage it every week: search terms, bids, creative, posts and tests, cutting what does not pay and doing more of what does.

5. Report in plain English

   A monthly report on leads, sales and cost per result, not vanity numbers, with what we will do next.

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