How To: Distribution Partner Utilisation Analysis

When your ad delivery data is viewed in aggregate, top-line metrics like total impressions and revenue can look healthy. But distribution partners don't all perform equally — some convert inventory into confirmed revenue reliably, while others generate a disproportionate share of unrealised revenue or leave ad slots unfilled entirely.

These differences are invisible until you break the data out at the partner level. This guide shows you how.

⏱ Time to build: ~10 minutes
📦 Module: Analysis (Pivot Table + Correlation Table views)

Related pages:

• Analysis Module — views, formulas, conditional formatting, metric filtering

• FreeWheel Metrics Reference — Realised/Unrealised revenue definitions, event type dependencies

• Metrics, Dimensions & Filters — platform-wide concepts

📋 On This Page

Exploration 1 — Partner Revenue Scorecard

Goal: One row per distribution partner, with a calculated percentage showing how much of that partner's revenue is unconfirmed — so you're not manually comparing two revenue columns.

🔧 Setup

Analysis → new exploration → Pivot Table view

Metrics:

Dimensions (in this order):

1. Your primary partner dimension (see Choosing Your Dimensions below)

2. Device Type

3. FW: Ad Unit Type (FreeWheel) or an equivalent position/format dimension

Date range: Last 14 days
Order by: Gross Ad Server Revenue - Realised DESC

➕ Add a formula: Unrealised Revenue %

Click the formula icon and create:

(Gross Ad Server Revenue - Unrealised / (Gross Ad Server Revenue - Realised + Gross Ad Server Revenue - Unrealised)) * 100

This produces a single percentage per partner row. At a glance: a partner at 10–15% is healthy. A partner at 40%+ has a significant confirmation gap worth investigating.

🎨 Add conditional formatting

Apply conditional formatting to make problem areas stand out without scanning numbers:

🔍 Reading the results

At the collapsed level, each row is a distribution partner ranked by confirmed revenue. The Unrealised % formula and colour coding immediately surface which partners warrant attention.

Expand any partner row to drill into Device Type → Ad Unit Type. The issue is rarely the partner overall — it's typically concentrated on a specific device or ad position within that partner.

💡 Tip: Use the quick-filter button (funnel icon next to each row) to instantly filter the entire exploration to a specific partner or device slice for deeper analysis.

🏷 Filtering by inventory type

If your account has custom dimensions that segment inventory (e.g., FAST vs Live Linear vs On Demand), add these as exploration-level filters before running the pivot. This lets you run the same scorecard across different content types to see whether partner performance varies.

Exploration 2 — Unrealised Revenue Heat Map

Goal: See exactly where unrealised revenue concentrates across two dimensions at once — without expanding rows or scrolling through a table.

🔧 Setup

Analysis → new exploration → Correlation Table view

Metric: Gross Ad Server Revenue - Unrealised

Dimensions:

• Rows: Your primary partner dimension

• Columns: Device Type

This renders as a visual grid — partners down one axis, device types across the other, with cells sized and coloured by unrealised revenue. The hot spots are immediately visible.

🔄 Variations

Swap Device Type for other dimensions depending on what you're investigating:

📊 Turning It Into a Standing Report

The explorations above are ad-hoc investigation tools. Once you've identified findings worth tracking, build a Report dashboard to monitor the same metrics over time.

💡 Tip: Set date range overrides per widget — the timeseries might show 30 days while the scorecard shows 7. Each widget can also override its data source independently if you need to combine FreeWheel and SpringServe data in the same report.

Contact your account team if you'd like help building this.

🧭 Choosing Your Dimensions

The right partner dimension depends on your data source and how your distribution relationships are structured.

⚠️ Cross-data-source note: Revenue metrics (Realised/Unrealised) are derived from FreeWheel IMPRESSION events. If your primary partner dimension is a SpringServe dimension (SS: Partner), verify that revenue metrics populate against it in your account. If they don't, run separate explorations per data source.

✅ Prerequisites

If any of these aren't active in your account, contact your account team. See the Getting Started: FreeWheel Setup Guide for configuration details.