Automation Case Study: 4 Steps to Auto-Generate Instagram Ad Reports
Attention marketers! Are you still manually pulling Instagram ad performance data one by one?
If your company primarily uses Instagram advertising, you've probably experienced this at least once.
One or two ads are manageable, but when you have 10, 20, or even dozens of ads, things get overwhelming.
You have to go into each account, click on each ad one by one to check likes, impressions, and so on, then copy-paste everything into Excel or spreadsheets.
This adds up to more time than you'd think, and critically, mistakes start creeping in.
Before you know it, you're wishing someone would do this for you at least ten times a day, but nothing changes.
....(serious)
Managing Ad Performance Across 30+ Locations: Company W's Challenge
Company W reached out to us with exactly this problem. They were running Instagram Reels ads across more than thirty store accounts.
This meant they had to check ad performance every other day, and every ad's performance had to be checked individually.
Since they had to manually go into each account and post, then copy impressions, likes, and comment counts into spreadsheets by hand, they were processing at least 15 ad performance reports manually per month.
The problem didn't stop at inconvenience. Data was sometimes missing, sometimes duplicated, and human errors like incorrect entries further undermined the reliability of ad performance reports.
Additionally, collected data was scattered across different locations, requiring extra time just to compile monthly reports.
As a result, employee productivity kept declining, and the company was stuck in a vicious cycle of being unable to focus on important work.
Auto-Generating Instagram Ad Reports: The Process
The solution I proposed was automation through MAKE. The system I built is divided into 4 steps.
Step 1. Just paste store names and post links in Google Sheets — the rest is automatic
All the user needs to do is enter store names and ad Reels URLs into a Google Sheet.
② Instagram ad post link input field
③ Report generation request button (just press this and you're done)
MAKE automatically recognizes the content through Google Sheets API integration and begins the link collection process on its own.
[Scenario Configuration]
Step 2. Automatically collecting Instagram data with Apify API
In the next step, based on the collected Instagram links, Apify's API scraping automatically retrieves key performance metrics such as likes, impressions, and comments for each ad. No human intervention needed.
[Scenario Configuration]
Step 3. Automatically entering organized data neatly into Google Sheets
The scraped performance metrics are automatically organized into designated columns and rows for each ad in Google Sheets according to a pre-made template format.
This way, users can view data conveniently and efficiently at a glance.
[Scenario Configuration]
② Since all data has been collected, trigger report generation.
Step 4. Automatically converting to report format and saving
Finally, data is automatically converted into a report format and stored in a designated Google Drive folder.
[Scenario Configuration]
② Collect data for the report including views, captions, IDs, upload dates, etc.
③ Module structure that creates the final report sheet in Google Drive
No need to create separate reports or go through copy-paste processes — just press a button and download the file.
Ad Performance Reports Done with a Single Button Click
After the system was built?
Previously, measuring and processing performance data for a single ad took an average of 1 hour.
Considering 15 ads per month, that's about 15 hours per month, or 180 hours wasted per year.
Converting this to minimum wage amounts to a staggering 1,805,400 KRW per year wasted on simple repetitive busywork.
In contrast, with MAKE automation, all this work is now handled for just about $108 per year (approximately 149,024 KRW).
That's approximately 91.5% cost savings compared to what was being spent on ad performance management.
Furthermore, human errors like data omissions and incorrect entries have been significantly reduced, and employees can now dedicate their energy to truly valuable work.
When you focus on 'performance itself' rather than performance data collection
If your company uses Instagram advertising, you know how important ad performance data is.
But what truly matters isn't collecting performance data — it's using that data to improve ad effectiveness and grow strategically.
Stop wasting time on performance measurement.
Instead of copy-pasting, gather all your ad performance with a single button click.
IMPAKERS Blog | Here's another sheet management automation case study! Read more