Reading your sponsor report
What each number on a sponsor report means, where it came from, and what it does not claim.
On this page 8
What the report is for
A sponsor report is built from one sponsor order and is the thing you send a brand after their race. It is designed to be handed to someone who was not there, so every number on it says where it came from rather than asking the reader to trust it.
Setting up the commercial side of a package is still done with a person rather than a self-serve checkout. See Sponsor orders and partner reports for how an order comes into being.
The five numbers
- Impressions. A sponsor logo actually rendered in front of someone.
- CTA clicks. Someone followed the sponsor's tracked link.
- QR scans. Someone scanned the sponsor's code.
- Attributed downloads. Someone downloaded a photo carrying that sponsor's logo.
- Sponsor-funded unlocks. A download that the sponsor's funding paid for.
Measured, reported, or not yet measured
Every number carries one of three labels, and the difference matters more than the number.
Measured means we counted it ourselves from platform instrumentation. Reported means a human on your side typed it in as proof of an offline placement, and it is always labelled as reported rather than passed off as measured. Not yet measured means there is no instrumentation and nobody entered a figure, so the report says so instead of inventing one.
When both exist for the same metric, the measured number wins. That is deliberate: it stops a report over-claiming on the strength of a hand-entered figure.
What a zero means
A zero is not always the same statement.
For CTA clicks and QR scans, a zero is a real finding when a tracking link is in place. Nobody clicked, and the report says nobody clicked.
For impressions, attributed downloads, and funded unlocks, a zero is not claimed as measured. Nothing at present distinguishes "we watched and it was zero" from "we were not watching," so those fall through to a reported figure or to Not yet measured rather than asserting a zero we cannot stand behind.
Impressions are a floor, not a total
Read the impressions figure as the least it could have been.
They are counted on photo pages and email opens. Identified crawlers are excluded, so a search engine re-crawling a sponsored event does not mint reach that no person ever saw. The same viewer counts once per photo per hour rather than every time they refresh. And views inside the gallery lightbox are not counted yet at all.
Every one of those choices pushes the number down. Real reach is higher than what the report prints, and it is fine to tell a sponsor that.
The measurement change on 27 July 2026
Anything covering dates before 27 July 2026 needs care, and the report will flag this itself.
Impressions before that date counted downloads of share assets rather than views of a photo. That is a different quantity, not a smaller one, so an old figure and a new figure cannot be compared or added together. Attributed downloads before that date are undercounts of the same quantity, so those are directionally usable but low.
A report spanning that date will show a step change. It reflects the change in measurement, not a change in the sponsor's audience, and it is worth saying so out loud before a sponsor draws the wrong conclusion.
Alongside the numbers
The report also carries the order snapshot, which placement was linked, the deliverables attached to the order, and a renewal summary. There is an About these numbers section that states the same caveats to the sponsor directly, so you are not the only one carrying the context.
You can export the report as a CSV, which carries the per-deliverable rows including placement, evidence and screenshot links, live dates, and proof notes.
When to send it
While the race is fresh. A report that arrives the week after the event is worth considerably more than one that shows up at renewal time.
Open your sponsor orders in your organization admin.