Services 04. Optimize

Budget Allocation

Cross-channel budget allocation decisions answer questions such as, “How much should I put toward online vs. offline channels?” or “How much should I allocate toward brand vs. performance channels?”

The three most popular methods to assist marketers in making cross-channel budget allocation decisions are Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA), in tools such as Google Analytics 360, representing a machine-driven, bottom-up, and quantitative approach; Media Mix Modeling (MMM), representing a mostly human-driven, top-down, and mostly qualitative approach; and Hybrid, offering a combination of MTA and MMM.

Media Mix Modeling is becoming especially relevant today as marketers move toward a world without third-party identifiers.

The Business Challenge

Online marketers have heard about the holy grail of quantitative multi-touch attribution (MTA) for the last 20 years. Agencies and consultancies have been pushing brands to move beyond “last click” and embrace more complex, machine-driven attribution models in tools such as Google Analytics 360 (for all digital channels) or Campaign Manager 360 (for programmatic advertising or display campaigns).

But the concept of MTA is broken. Data-driven attribution has never been fully embraced by the market because marketers didn’t feel comfortable with less than 100% accuracy. The coming deprecation of third-party identifiers driven by Google and Apple means that attribution’s accuracy will fall below 50%, making MTA irrelevant.

Marketers are looking for other approaches to determine how much to allocate to which channels. The need to dynamically adjust allocation of media dollars among campaigns—offline and online—is an omnipresent challenge.

The Benefits of Solving It

When your brand moves beyond quantitative multi-touch attribution and embraces more qualitative media mix modeling (MMM), it will capture the following benefits:

Assessment of the cause and effect of changes to the marketing media mix
Understanding of how much to put in both performance and brand-building channels
Improved RoAS from each media channel
Proactive management of the marketing mix toward future goals instead of assigning credit to historic campaigns

Our Approach To Budget Allocation

Our Process

Multi-Touch Attribution

DELVE’s Analytics team will review your current attribution setup in Google Analytics 360, Campaign Manager 360 (for cross-DSP campaigns), or Adobe Analytics.
DELVE will recommend specific changes to tagging (e.g., UTMs or CIDs) at channel and campaign level.
DELVE will then set up attribution reporting, and train you and your team on using these new reports, leaning on quantitative, machine-driven recommendations to make media allocation decisions.

Media Mix Modeling

DELVE’s Data Science team will gather data (optimally two years’ worth) from your past media and revenue activities.
DELVE will analyze the data by market, tactic, and day.
Then, partnering with your Media and Analytics teams, we will suggest—on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis—what budget share to allocate to offline, online, performance, and brand-building marketing channels.

Your Outcomes

Decision support for future media budget allocation across all offline, online, brand-building, and performance channels
Confidence that your budget is working as hard as possible, delivering strong RoAS and revenue growth
Empowerment to hold CEO-, CFO- and Board-level conversations explaining the causality between inputs (media budget) and outcomes (revenue impact)