Can Looker Studio handle real-time marketing data?
Close to live, but not instant. Looker Studio keeps a cached copy of each data source and refreshes it on a freshness setting, which you choose per data source. How short you can set it depends on the connector. Refreshing the report may not bypass the cache. For weekly and monthly reports that's plenty.
The short version
Looker Studio isn't a live feed. When someone opens a report, it shows the cached data until that source's freshness window runs out, then it queries the source again. You set the window for each data source, and the options depend on the connector.
What that means in practice
- A report that opens to yesterday's numbers is normal, and fine for a weekly or monthly review.
- A manual refresh may not bypass the cache.
- A very short window on BigQuery or GA4 sources can raise query costs or use up API quota, so set it no shorter than the report needs.
- If something truly needs minute-by-minute numbers, the ad platform's own screen is the better place to look.
Our ongoing reporting service builds the reports in Looker Studio.
Also worth asking
Other answers about the same tools.
What is ongoing management, support, and reporting?
It means we don't launch your marketing and leave. We keep running and improving your ads, website and tracking on a retainer, and send reports that show what's working and what we'd change.
What’s included in your performance reporting?
Spend, leads or sales, and cost per result by channel, using data we've checked first. Reports sit in a Looker Studio dashboard you can open any time, and each one ends with what we'd push, fix or stop.
How do you ensure continuous optimisation of my marketing?
We look at your ads, website and CRM together, then make the biggest fix first. That might be a test, a creative refresh, a landing page change or a tracking repair.
How do you communicate updates and results to clients?
Through reports you can open yourself, calls where we walk through them, and a chat channel for anything urgent. How often depends on the work we've agreed, and we keep updates short so they don't eat into your day.
What happens during onboarding for ongoing support?
Onboarding has three steps: you fill in a questionnaire about your business, we review your current marketing, site and analytics, and we agree what to fix first. Then the regular reports, calls and improvements begin.
Still have questions?Talk to us
Bring your numbers.
We'll tell you if the spend makes sense.
- A 15-minute callYour goals, your challenges, and whether we're the right fit.
- A 1-hour discovery callWe dig into your numbers. Worth a hundred emails.
- A concrete planAds, a custom build or both, as a one-off project or ongoing.