Because whether your brand is spending $1M or $100M in media, the pressure is the same: make every dollar count. And that means being able to predict which channels drive incremental revenue— not just for today’s goals, but for long-term growth.
So how do you do that? Through our partnership with Keen Decisions, we work with clients to shift their focus from backward-looking reports to forward-looking, scenario-based planning. If you’ve ever sat in a planning meeting and asked:
- What’s the optimal mix of channels for this budget?
- Where are we seeing diminishing returns?
- What’s the incremental lift of each tactic—or is our performance just coming from promos?
- If we add (or cut) budget, what will actually change in outcomes?
…you’re not alone.
These questions are the crux of modern media strategy. Yet they’re surprisingly hard to answer using traditional attribution tools or quarterly wrap-up decks. Most reporting is built to tell you what happened. But when the market shifts overnight, that’s just not enough.
Why Measurement Can’t Stop at Measurement
The problem with most measurement tools? They’re reactive. They’re based on what’s already occurred, which means your next move is always based on old information.
The new bar for marketing performance isn’t just measurement; it’s planning:
- How much should we spend per channel, per week, to hit our goals?
- What happens if we shift money to a new channel?
- How will our mix perform in a down market—or a growth year?
- What can I expect from performance if I make a change in price?
Strategic brands are ditching dated dashboards in favor of modeling tools that forecast real business outcomes. Not just CTRs or CPMs, but revenue, profit, and long-term brand equity.
We partner our clients with the right tools to predict business outcomes within a 4% margin of error.
Planning Over Performance: A Long-Term View
Most attribution tools zero in on clicks and conversions over a 30-day window: great for performance insights, but blind to the full-funnel and long-term picture of your media investments. That’s where portfolio-level planning comes in.
Keen Decisions’ approach doesn’t just look at one channel, it evaluates all of them in tandem. It factors in:
- Incrementality: Is this channel truly adding value, or cannibalizing another?
- Halo effects: What’s the indirect lift on other platforms or sales channels?
- Long-term impact: Is this campaign growing the base or just harvesting demand?
Additionally, the best models support multi-year planning, allowing you to evaluate the value of marketing not just this quarter, but up to 5 years into the future.
What One Brand Learned When They Shifted From Gut to Model
Let’s look at a real example.
A Code3 client wanted to understand how their media was impacting sales across Amazon, DTC, and retail. Their old approach? Manual data pulls, strung together assumptions, and many unanswered questions.
By shifting to a more advanced forecasting model through Keen Decisions, they uncovered insights that changed their strategy:
- Social and audio were showing strong ROI, but were underinvested.
- Amazon Search was saturated; ROI was falling as spend increased.
- Upper-funnel tactics like STV and LTV delivered incremental lift — especially when connected to performance channels.
- And most importantly: not all growth is profitable. Hitting the brand’s stretch revenue goals would have required investment levels that sacrificed margin.
With these insights, the team could better fuel what success should look like — not just for a revenue goal, but efficiency and profitability, too.
From Crawl to Run: Evolving Your Investment Strategy
Sounds like something you want to be doing, right? But no one flips a full-funnel strategy overnight. It’s about evolving media plans step by step. We recommend a crawl, walk, run strategy.
Here’s what that looked like for the Code3 client:
- Crawl: The forecasting models confirmed the Code3 team’s strategy that was already tracking toward better investment balance: social was up 53% YoY, LTV up 66%, and influencer spend up 155%.
- Walk: They used their model to reconcile forecasts with real results, validating wins and identifying areas to push harder.
- Run: They revised their 2H media plans using model insights, reallocating spend toward the highest-ROI channels and week-by-week flighting structures.
And the biggest takeaway? Real results, less guessing, and a clearer path to profitability.
What This Means for Your Brand
If your brand is:
- Spending across multiple channels
- Managing a 7-figure marketing budget
- Seeking clarity on where to invest and why
…then it’s time to stop optimizing based on old data and start planning based on what works.
Because driving growth shouldn’t just come down to spending more, it’s about making smarter decisions about where and when to invest your media to accomplish your revenue and margin goals.. And the brands that win in 2025 will be the ones who forecast better, act faster, and back every decision with data.