What Happens to Advertiser Data When an Advertiser is Deactivated or Deleted

NinjaCat customers often manage a large roster of advertisers, and that roster naturally changes over time. Advertisers come and go, get paused between campaigns, or are removed once an engagement ends. This guide explains what you can expect to see in the platform when an advertiser's status changes, so you can manage your account confidently and know your reporting will reflect the right view of your business.

Quick summary

Throughout this guide, "deactivated" and "inactive" mean the same thing: an advertiser whose status has been switched off but who has not been deleted from your account.

Active advertisers

Active advertisers are the default. NinjaCat regularly refreshes data for them from your connected platforms, and they appear in your reports, dashboards, and exports as normal. There's nothing to configure — this is the standard behavior.

Inactive (deactivated) advertisers

Marking an advertiser as inactive is a soft change. It signals that the advertiser isn't currently a priority, but it doesn't remove them from your account.

What you'll see:

• The advertiser remains in your account and is still visible in your advertiser list.
• Existing historical data for that advertiser stays available in reports and dashboards that include them.
• Data already in NinjaCat is preserved — nothing is removed when you mark an advertiser inactive.

If your goal is to fully stop an advertiser from appearing in reporting outputs, see the next section on deletion.

Deleted advertisers

Deleting an advertiser is a stronger action. It tells NinjaCat that the advertiser should be excluded from your reporting going forward.

What you'll see on the dataset side (datasets, dataset-powered reports, and dashboards built on datasets):

• The advertiser is filtered out of all reporting outputs. Reports, dashboards, and dataset exports will no longer include them.
• This applies to both new and historical reporting — once deleted, the advertiser's data stops appearing in dataset outputs entirely.

What you'll see on the legacy data warehouse (RDW) side (older reports built on the legacy data warehouse rather than datasets):

• Legacy data warehouse reports follow standard data retention policies for each data source rather than reacting to advertiser deletion. In practice, that means historical data on the legacy side ages out on its normal schedule.
• If you're working primarily on the dataset side (the modern NinjaCat reporting experience), the dataset-side behavior above is what governs what your end users see.

Not sure which side you're on? Most modern NinjaCat reports and dashboards are built on datasets. If you're building reports in the dataset-powered experience, the "dataset side" rules apply. Your NinjaCat representative can confirm if you have any legacy reports still in use.

A note on data privacy and removal

Deleting an advertiser ensures their data is no longer surfaced in your NinjaCat reporting. If you have a specific data removal need that goes beyond hiding an advertiser from reports — for example, a data subject request or contractual data removal — please contact NinjaCat Support so we can help you handle it appropriately.

Reactivating a previously inactive advertiser

If you flip an inactive advertiser back to active, NinjaCat picks them back up automatically:

• The advertiser becomes visible in your active advertiser list again.
• New data refreshes resume on the regular schedule for their connected data sources.
• Historical data that was already in NinjaCat before deactivation remains available — there's no re-import needed.

You don't need to take any special action beyond changing the status back to active.

Frequently asked questions

Will my monthly report match the sum of my daily reports if advertisers change status during the month?

If you deliver scheduled reports (for example, a daily CSV to an SFTP destination plus a monthly summary), it's worth understanding how advertiser status changes interact with those exports.

• Deactivating an advertiser mid-period: No impact on report totals. Inactive advertisers continue to appear in reporting outputs alongside active advertisers, so a daily report on Day 15 and a monthly report covering Days 1–30 will both include their data.
• Deleting an advertiser mid-period: This can cause a difference between the sum of your daily reports and your monthly report. Each report reflects the current state of your advertiser roster at the moment it runs. A daily report delivered on Day 10 captured that advertiser; a monthly report run on Day 30 — after the advertiser was deleted on Day 16 — will exclude them. As a result, the monthly total may be lower than the simple union of the daily files for that period.

What this means in practice: Files already delivered to your SFTP destination are not modified retroactively — once a daily CSV is written, it stays as-is. The discrepancy comes from the monthly report being generated after the deletion, against a roster that no longer includes the removed advertiser.

If matching daily and monthly totals is important for your downstream process, we recommend deactivating advertisers (rather than deleting them) for the remainder of the reporting period, and performing deletions at period boundaries. If you need help structuring this for a specific reporting workflow, reach out to NinjaCat Support.

Will deleting an advertiser remove old reports that already include them?
Reports already exported or shared outside of NinjaCat (for example, PDFs or CSVs you've sent to clients) are unaffected — those copies live wherever you saved them. Inside NinjaCat, dataset-powered reports and dashboards will no longer include the deleted advertiser the next time they refresh.

If I deactivate an advertiser, will my reports look different?
Not for that advertiser's existing data. Inactive advertisers continue to appear in reports they were already part of. Deactivation is best thought of as an organizational signal, not a reporting filter.

Can I get a deleted advertiser back?
If you delete an advertiser by mistake, contact NinjaCat Support as soon as possible. We may be able to help restore it depending on the situation.

Does this apply to my data connections too?
This guide covers advertiser-level status changes. Data connections (the platforms you've authorized NinjaCat to pull from) are managed separately. See How Historical Data Syncing Works in NinjaCat for related context.

Need help?

If you're unsure whether to deactivate or delete an advertiser — or you want to confirm what will change in your reporting before you act — reach out to your NinjaCat representative or contact Support. We're happy to walk through it with you.