CASE STUDY
Data Infrastructure Overhaul for a Digital Media Network
How a Digital Media Network Rebuilt Trust in Their Reporting Infrastructure
Client Snapshot
This U.S.-based digital media organization, known for its network of regional outlets and audience-targeted campaigns, was struggling with unreliable reporting, inconsistent identifiers across multiple data sources, and an overwhelming backlog of technical debt.
Database Tycoon stabilized their data pipeline, restored historical accuracy, and implemented sustainable governance practices for longterm success.
Industry: Digital Media & Publishing
Engagement Length: 4 Months
Key Results: Unified identifiers, stable marts, and validated reporting pipelines
The Stack
Big Query
Google Analytics
Sprout Social
Wordpress
dbt
CLIENT CHALLENGE
CLIENT CHALLENGE
Client Challenge
Years of quick fixes and ad hoc data handling had created fragility for this organization: pipelines failed silently, PRs stalled, and key dashboards contradicted each other. Before working with Database Tycoon, this digital media network faced unreliable reporting, inconsistent identifiers across data sources, and a growing backlog of technical debt.
They felt: Stuck with a fragile data stack and unable to confidently report on key performance metrics.
Their data environment looked like: Fragmented marts across WordPress, Google Analytics, and Sprout Social; stalled PRs; broken ingestion pipelines; and undocumented transformations that slowed progress and eroded team trust.
The goal: The team wanted cleaner integrations, stable pipelines, and accurate dashboards to guide marketing decisions and weekly reporting.
Our Approach
Database Tycoon partnered with the client to stabilize, standardize, and sustain their reporting infrastructure. The engagement combined technical intervention with long-term process improvement.
Our experts focused on these key initiatives:
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We began by auditing the existing marts, refactoring SQL models in dbt, and resolving ingestion failures that had stalled data updates for weeks.
Historical gaps were identified and systematically backfilled, ensuring continuity and accuracy across dashboards. This work laid the foundation for all subsequent validation and standardization efforts.
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We redeployed and validated the Sprout Social mart, implementing Cloud Run-based log validation to track ingestion reliability and pipeline health.
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Legacy WordPress models contained inconsistent author and post identifiers, creating disconnects between content performance metrics.
Database Tycoon rebuilt these marts with a standardized identifier framework allowing for each piece of content, author, and campaign metric to map between systems, enabling reliable cross-platform joins.
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A backlog of unmerged pull requests and inconsistent naming conventions had made maintenance difficult. We unblocked and merged the most critical PRs, documented model dependencies, and introduced a structured naming system for clarity and long-term maintainability.
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To prevent regressions, we introduced dbt documentation coverage across all active models and implemented archiving protocols for deprecated assets.
These practices improve discoverability and ensure institutional knowledge won’t be lost during team transitions.
🔦 Strategy Spotlight
One of the biggest challenges of this engagement was helping the client balance immediate fixes with sustainable rebuilds. Years of ad hoc data work had created technical debt that made every change risky.
Database Tycoon worked closely with the internal analytics team to prioritize stabilization first. We focused on fixing ingestion reliability, resolving failed joins, and unblocking delayed PRs. Only after those core systems were stable did we layer in documentation, metadata, and archiving protocols designed to prevent future regressions.
Client Results
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Unified IDs across 3 major sources
Standardized identifiers across Google Analytics, WordPress, and Sprout Social provide a single source of truth for cross-platform metrics, enabling confident reporting without manual reconciliation.
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Rebuilt Sprout Social Mart
The redeployed and validated Sprout Social mart delivers accurate, timely engagement metrics, enabling confident reporting and reliable campaign analysis.
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Future-proofed foundation
Standardized identifiers, dbt documentation, and archiving protocols ensure long-term maintainability. Teams can now extend models safely, onboard new analysts quickly, and avoid repeating historical technical debt.
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Reduced operational burden
By resolving ingestion failures and addressing legacy technical debt, dashboards are now maintainable with minimal effort, allowing analysts to focus on insights instead of firefighting data issues.
