We watched how clients use monthly reports. Most of what agencies put in them is never opened.
Monthly reports get longer over time. Someone asks a question, a section is added to pre-empt it, and the section never leaves. Three years later the report is nineteen pages and the client reads the first one.
The first paragraph. Whether the number went up or down versus last month. Whether spend matched budget. And — if there is one — the section that says what is happening next.
That is close to the whole list.
Channel-level breakdowns nobody asked for. Impression share. Any chart with more than two series. Anything requiring the reader to know what a term means.
This is not a criticism of clients. They hired you so they would not have to learn this. A report that requires interpretation has moved work back onto them.
A written summary at the top, in plain language, that would make sense read aloud. Three numbers, not thirty. An explicit statement of what changed and what we are doing about it.
Everything else moves into the portal, available on demand, for the minority of clients who genuinely want to dig. They exist, and the portal serves them better than a PDF ever did.
If your client forwards the report to their boss without adding a summary, it is working. If they always write a paragraph on top of it, you should have written that paragraph.
Send the shape of what you are carrying — how many accounts, which channels, where it hurts. We will come back with specifics.