2,000 hours of reporting a year, cut to under 500.

The challenge

Our founder led the work inside a major US media network's high-volume podcast advertising operation, before Podrelay existed. The network managed a large roster of shows and more than 70 concurrent advertisers cycling through recurring reporting periods.

Every cycle required data from multiple sources to be gathered, aligned, checked and prepared for client delivery. Ad verification and show QC created a second layer of repetitive work on top of it. And underneath both sat a risk that no amount of care fully removed: a mismatch introduced during manual handling could reach a client before anyone noticed.

Before

The cumulative reporting, verification and QC workload exceeded 2,000 hours per year. Most of that time went to activity that was entirely repeatable: pulling the same sources, applying the same transformations, checking the same fields, assembling the same outputs in the same order.

Work of that shape has a specific failure pattern. It does not break loudly. It quietly consumes the capacity that would otherwise go to strategy, optimization and client service, and it grows in direct proportion to how successful the business becomes. Every new advertiser added load to a process that could not absorb it without adding people.

The solution

The operation was designed around three connected responsibilities rather than a single dashboard:

• Consistent multi-source reporting prepared for client delivery on a dependable schedule
• Quality assurance applied before any figure reached an external report
• Show-level verification confirming that booked advertising actually delivered

Critically, the system was built on top of the tools already in use. There was no platform migration, no retraining program, and no need to expose the implementation layer to the network's own clients. The operation kept its existing stack and gained a maintained layer on top of it.

The results

The change the team felt daily was at the report level. Assembling one advertiser's monthly report went from around two hours to under fifteen minutes: pulling each source, aligning the periods, formatting the output and checking it. With 70+ advertisers on a monthly cycle, that is roughly 840 reports a year, and about 90% less handling on each one.

Aggregated, more than 1,500 hours of manual work were eliminated annually, taking the recurring workload from over 2,000 hours to under 500. That is about two-thirds of a full-time role (0.7 FTE) returned to higher-value work, and roughly $52,500 a year in internal labor cost at a conservative blended rate.

The operational effect went beyond the time saved. Reports moved on a more dependable schedule. Discrepancies surfaced early enough to be fixed rather than explained. And the team gained a continuous record across reporting and verification, which changed what an advertiser conversation looked like: a documented event with a proposed remedy, instead of two parties arguing from memory.

What this demonstrates

The largest gains did not come from better charts. They came from connecting collection, checks, exceptions and delivery into one maintained workflow, then keeping a person accountable for the part that still required judgment.

This case study describes the operating principles and verified outcomes. It intentionally omits proprietary mechanics, internal access patterns and client-sensitive detail.

Client identity withheld under confidentiality. Hours and advertiser counts reflect actual results achieved. Per-report timings are typical rather than guaranteed and vary with the number of sources a given advertiser draws on. Annual figures assume 70 advertisers on a monthly cycle, or 840 reporting cycles a year. Cost figures apply a deliberately conservative $35/hr blended internal rate, below the $45/hr default used in the estimator on the home page.