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Skykit Insights Setup Guide

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  • Published on Sep 8, 2026
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Skykit Insights Setup Guide

This guide walks you through connecting your organization's Google Cloud environment to Skykit Insights, so your team can start querying device and Proof-of-Play data.

Before you start, check out What Is Skykit Insights? and confirm access with your Skykit representative.

🔧 What You'll Need

  • 👤 Someone with permission to create or configure Google Cloud projects, manage billing, and assign IAM roles (typically a GCP admin or a member of your IT/BI team)
  • ☁️ An active Google Cloud account with a billing account attached (a credit card or bank account is required for identity verification, even if you stay within Google's free tier)
  • 📧 The service account email your Skykit representative provides for your setup — this is the principal you'll grant access to below

📋 Step-by-Step: Connect Your Google Cloud Environment

Step 1: Set Up Your Google Cloud Project

If your organization already has a Google Cloud project you'd like to use for Skykit Insights, skip to Step 2.

If you're new to Google Cloud:

  1. Go to the Google Cloud Console and sign up.
  2. Activate billing. Google requires an active billing account to use a project, even if usage stays within the free tier.
  3. Once your account is active, click the Project Selector in the top left and select New Project.

Step 2: Name and Create Your Project

Give your project a clear, recognizable name — for example, sk-insights-<your-organization>. Your Skykit contact can confirm the exact naming convention to use for your setup.

Step 3: Assign Permissions to Skykit's Service Account

  1. In the Google Cloud Console, navigate to IAM & Admin > IAM.
  2. Click Add to add a new principal.
  3. Enter the Skykit service account email your representative provided.
  4. Assign the role BigQuery Admin.
  5. Save your changes.

Step 4: Confirm With Skykit

Once your project is live and the role is assigned, let your Skykit representative know. Skykit will use this access to configure the connection on their end.

Step 5: Find Your Data

Once Skykit confirms the connection, a new dataset called insights_v1beta1 will appear in your Google Cloud project. It contains two tables:

  • 📊 display — daily snapshots of your device metadata, partitioned by date. Use this to check current fleet status or analyze historical trends.
  • 🎬 player_pop — granular Proof-of-Play event records, refreshed every [XX] minutes, for playback reporting.

Step 6: Run Your First Queries

Here are two starter queries to try once data starts populating (replace <your-project-id> with your actual project ID):

See your most recent device snapshot:

SELECT *
FROM `<your-project-id>.insights_v1beta1.display`
WHERE _date = CURRENT_DATE()

View Proof-of-Play logs from a given start date:

SELECT *
FROM `<your-project-id>.insights_v1beta1.player_pop`
WHERE _date >= DATE(2026, 2, 1)

Pro tip: If you'd like Skykit's team to help save these (and a few more advanced views) directly in your BigQuery console, just let your representative know!

🔐 Optional: Grant Skykit Temporary Setup Access

If you want Skykit's team to configure saved queries on your behalf, you can grant them temporary access that expires automatically:

  1. In IAM & Admin > IAM, add the Skykit representative's email as a new principal with the BigQuery Admin role.
  2. Add an IAM Condition to set the access to expire automatically after 24 hours (or another window you're comfortable with).
  3. Let your Skykit contact know once access is granted so they can get started.

💡 Important note: This keeps your environment secure without requiring anyone to manually remove access later.

📊 Connect Your BI Tool (Optional)

Because your data lives in BigQuery, you can connect it to compatible BI tools such as Looker, Power BI, or Tableau to build dashboards and reports. Compatibility and configuration steps vary by platform — check your BI tool's BigQuery connector documentation, or ask your Skykit representative for guidance.

💰 Understanding Query Costs

BigQuery on-demand query costs are based on how much data a query scans:

  • Before you run a query in the BigQuery console, Google shows an estimate of how much data it will process (for example, "This query will process 180.36 MB when run").
  • On-demand pricing in US regions is approximately 0.000006 per MB).
  • Google includes 1 TB of query data processed per month at no charge.
  • Standard views re-run their underlying query — and are billed accordingly — every time they're queried. Materialized views store results to reduce query costs, but add storage fees (roughly 0.01/GB long-term, per month).

🔧 Tips to manage costs:

  • ✅ Select only the columns you need instead of using SELECT *
  • ✅ Filter by date and use partitioned fields whenever possible
  • ✅ Use the Preview tab to look at sample data — this is free and doesn't run a query
  • ✅ Consider a materialized view for reports you run frequently
  • ✅ Set up Google Cloud budgets and billing alerts so your team gets notified of usage trends

Google Cloud usage is billed directly to your organization's Google Cloud billing account — this is separate from your Skykit Insights subscription. Skykit charges a separate annual fee that covers setup and ongoing maintenance of the data connection; that fee doesn't include your organization's BigQuery query or storage costs, which are billed by Google based on usage. Your Skykit representative can confirm current pricing.

🆘 Need Help?

Check the Skykit Insights FAQ for answers to common questions. If you run into any issues during setup, contact Support@skykit.com for the fastest response, or reach out to your Skykit representative for account-specific details.

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