Services 04. Optimize

RoAS Optimization

Brand-building and performance channels have one thing in common: the need to deliver a strong RoAS. In the age of AI and ML, media traders are sometimes drawn to outsourcing RoAS optimization to the algorithms. Yet, at least for now and the foreseeable future, human intelligence still continues to offer many advantages.

At DELVE, we believe in the power of consistency—improving campaigns day over day and week over week. While tempting ML solutions provide good backup to rely on, such solutions usually are not unique to your brand (unless deployed in a custom marketing data lake).

The power of human intelligence, achieved through rigorous process and teams that deliberately follow it, is still the best way to stay ahead of the RoAS performance curve.

The Business Challenge

Every business that spends money on brand or performance advertising wants to get the most value out of it.

To generate consistent gains from media investments, people managing media (either in-house resources or external agencies) need to focus on achieving the greatest revenue growth or RoAS.

To achieve the right RoAS, people in charge of advertising should break down a complex process of media management into smaller, repetitive steps, with insight and learning captured at each step. Over time, all the steps in the optimization cycle deliver a lasting lift in RoAS.

However, that’s hard to do. Sometimes the people in charge of advertising budgets haven’t managed media themselves and don’t know the exact questions to ask their in-house media team or media agency. Sometimes the people in charge of the media itself don’t know how to structure their campaigns to enable a good testing strategy. And sometimes the agency in charge of media doesn’t have the right people, or the agency is incentivized to only share rosy stories about wins while forgetting to learn from failures.

Accomplishing RoAS that’s steadily growing, and higher than others in the industry are able to generate, requires strict discipline, plenty of patience, and the right team.

The Benefits of Solving It

Utilizing a test-and-learn methodology for RoAS and media management delivers a number of benefits to your brand:

Understanding of what’s working in your media investments, and what is not
Clarity around what to cut, and where to re-invest saved media dollars
Internal credibility when explaining the “why” to others, especially the CFO: Why are we growing revenues, or why are revenues lagging?
Finally, consistent and predictable growth in RoAS, across all media channels and campaigns

Our Approach To RoAS Optimization

Our Process

DELVE’s Media team will partner with your agency or in-house Advertising, Marketing, or Analytics teams to understand your current media management processes around brand-building and performance channels.
DELVE will present a gap analysis, using the test-and-learn methodology as the framework. For example, we will explain how an approach such as Stop/Start/Continue can drive consistent week-over-week generation of insights to lift RoAS.
DELVE will then train and educate your agency and in-house teams on how to implement test-and-learn against social, search, or programmatic media efforts.
Finally, DELVE will serve the role of the third-party “controller,” ensuring consistent follow-through against the identified process.
DELVE also has an extensive Media Buying team that can take on your paid search, programmatic advertising, or direct mail programs when appropriate.

Your Outcomes

Understanding of what’s working and what is not
Clarity around where to cut, and where to re-invest media dollars
Credibility with the rest of your organization, driven by the ability to precisely pinpoint winning or losing campaign strategies
An evergreen and consistent approach to increasing RoAS