Overview
This tutorial walks you through creating Certified Datasources in Alli, ensuring your data is clean, consistent, and ready for action. You’ll learn how to add platforms, align data, and certify a datasource to create a single source of truth for your insights.
Why it matters
Certified Datasources form the foundation of actionable insights in Alli. Without them, teams struggle with fragmented data, inconsistent reporting, and manual workflows. By building a Certified Datasource, you give your team a reliable, validated data source—ready to fuel features like Ask Alli and custom reporting, so you can move from insights to action faster.
What you’ll learn
This tutorial provides step-by-step guidance on:
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Onboarding a platform: Connect platforms like Google Ads or Facebook Ads to begin ingesting data.
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Backfilling data: Align historical data for accuracy and consistency across your reports.
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Building and refreshing your Certified Datasource: Validate and enable your datasource for use in Data Explorer and advanced features like Ask Alli.
Next steps
- Onboarding CM360
- Onboarding The Trade Desk
- Onboarding Bidtellect
- Certified Datasources
Alli Certified Datasources simplify access to clean, cross-channel data that’s ready for action. Acting as a single source of truth, they empower teams to move faster by uncovering performance insights, identifying trends, and making smarter decisions.
- Certified Datasource References
- Tutorial: Getting started with Certified Datasources
- How-To: Include Custom DSP Cost in Display Reporting
Alli supports most major DSPs (demand-side platforms) used in programmatic and display advertising. However, some smaller platforms aren’t supported due to the lack of a public API or other technical limitations. This guide explains how to manually associate ad spend from these unsupported DSPs with corresponding CM360 placements or creatives in a Certified Datasource—enabling more accurate programmatic and display reporting.
- Report Field Mappings
- Placement ID methodology
The ad_performance report combines (1) ad-level data from DSPs on which customer serves media, and (2) placement-level data from CM360 using a join on cm_placement_id and date. This guide walks through where Placement ID comes from and how it is parsed from the respective DSPs.
- Core Categorizations
- How-To: Reclassify Media Channel
This guide explains how use to Categorizations to reclassify the media channel for your campaigns/ad groups in Certified Datasources
- ADL FAQs
This Document provides detailed answers to the most frequently asked questions regarding ADL 2.0. This guide aims to offer clarity and assistance to users encountering common issues below.
- How-To: Locate Source Data Used in Reporting
This guide shows how to identify the raw datasources in Alli Data that power a Certified Datasource. This is helpful when you need to modify the source – such as adding accounts, duplicating sources for QA, or troubleshooting data issues.
- How-To: Identify Which Platforms and Report Types are Enabled for Reporting
Use this guide to identify which platforms and report types are active in your Certified Datasource for reporting purposes.
- How-To: Categorize CM360 Conversions
By default, Campaign Manager 360 (CM360) returns all conversions regardless of the assigned activity type. This guide explains how to use Categorizations to classify these conversion activity types and exclude non-essential conversions.