Which Half of Your Media Isn’t Working?

These days almost every CMO is under immense pressure to increase the ROI of their paid media. Scrutiny from Boards, CEOs, and CFOs has intensified, and CMOs often tell us the same thing: “My budget was just cut, but my growth goals went up.” That math doesn’t work, unless they can find a way to increase ROAS.?

The good news is this can be solved, if you know where to look and take the right scientific, data-driven approach. In fact, we’ve found over $150M in opportunities for clients in just the past few months.

Opportunities in All Kinds of Places

When we analyze a new client’s advertising campaign, we find all kinds of opportunities to improve ROAS. Sometimes we recommend reducing spend in an inefficient channel and shifting to one that is working better. Other times we optimize a specific channel to perform better. Sometimes we identify opportunities at the top of the funnel, and sometimes they emerge at the bottom. Sometimes it is a big picture issue; other times it is deep in the details.

Here are just a few real examples of what we’ve recently discovered in reviewing new clients’ campaigns:

Modeling is Easy; Accuracy is Harder: Careful analysis of one client’s budgeting model revealed that some channels were actually oversaturated, due to subtle technical problems in the model that their analysts had failed to notice. These days it is easy to download open source MMM packages, but it is actually extremely hard to make a good model -- harder than people realize.?

Every Detail and Every Minute Matters - Maybe Millions: Our scientists, assisted by Skeptic, our optimization tool, found a way to increase a client’s revenue by $2M just by adjusting bidding and spend settings at very specific times of day. Clients or agencies that are trying to optimize without the right sophisticated algorithms and automations may be leaving money on the table.

The Right Model Can Uncover More: Our advanced Google model found a client could adjust bids and cut spending 50% and yet increase profit, something the client’s general MMM model had missed. Making this change also freed up millions of dollars to be reinvested in other channels and campaigns. Depending on past spend, it is easy for marketing mix models to miss opportunities that derive from shifts in bid strategies in auction-based marketplaces.

TV + CTV Evolved Faster than the Media Plan: Our analysis revealed that a client could cut over $30M from their video investment budget without lowering their reach, if they made better use of the combined powers of CTV and TV. CTV is expanding rapidly while TV is shrinking. A unified reach approach to planning can reveal huge opportunities to improve, but many still need to modernize their mix. Being even 2 years behind has a real cost.

Optimizing Search using AI: We used AI to help one recent client improve their ROAS on Search significantly. There are numerous applications of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning in Search optimization from keyword analysis, expansion, to bidding and budgeting.

Social Can Be Scientific: One recent new client was using a campaign and ad set structure that was really good for Facebook’s bottom line, but not the best for their own revenue. To maximize your results on walled gardens it is vital you understand what their algorithms are really trying to do. Our media scientists have spent years analyzing experiments in the war of the algorithms, uncovering lots of opportunities to get more out of them.

Creative is Half The Battle: Creative is the single most influential factor in driving campaign effectiveness, but we frequently find creative that isn’t tailored for the platform, wasn’t tested, doesn’t follow scientific best practices, or has been under-optimized. In theory media teams should know creative is critical, but in practice they often haven’t focused on it enough or don’t have the right tools and knowledge to do it.

Finally Re-Balancing Brand and Performance: Many clients should be investing more in brand and the upper funnel, but they worry about missing short term goals if they shift any spend out of performance. We frequently can find a way out of this conundrum; in one recent analysis we freed up $15.5M of ineffective performance spend the CMO could redeploy to fund a much needed new global brand campaign.

The examples above are just 8 from the more than 100 we found in the past year or so. Most brands have multiple opportunities to improve -- we usually find 6 to 10 for each client, and we can help you find them, too!

Known’s Media Opportunity Analysis Service

Known offers a Media Opportunity Analysis (“MOA”) service, built on top of our advanced data science and media optimization experience and leveraging the power of our SKEPTIC? media optimization platform. In a MOA, our data scientists and media strategists rapidly assess your paid marketing campaign, identify opportunities for improvement, and recommend changes you and your agency can make now to drive higher performance and efficiency. Our recommendations are highly actionable and ready in about 10 weeks.?

We Always Find Huge Opportunities to Improve. Yes, always.

Most importantly, Known’s MOA approach really works – every single time we help a new client we find millions of dollars in opportunities to increase the ROI of ad spend.?

For example, here are the value of opportunities we recently found at six different clients:

1. $25M in revenue lift from optimization recommendations
2. 31% Reduction in Customer Acquisition Cost from optimization
3. $25M of low ROI spend that could be redeployed and reinvested elsewhere
4. >20% Improvement in bottom line KPI from optimization recommendations
5. $10M of wasted spend that could be redeployed and reinvested elsewhere?
6. $20M+ of inefficient spend that could be redeployed for better results

Perhaps most importantly, we always find opportunities to improve. This is such a strong pattern that we offer a guarantee to new clients, ensuring that we will find opportunities that total up to many more times the cost of the MOA project.?

Contact Known to Learn More

If you would like to learn more about a MOA, contact me directly on this platform or email [email protected] to book a quick 30 minute overview.? We would love to tell you more.