🥅 Goals

❓What goals are used for

Using the Goals tool, you can:

Track your pacing against the goal
Automatically update forecasts and your chance of hitting the goal based on your current plan
Automatically receive recommendations on how you can reallocate budget to improve performance

Goals have the following components:

A KPI goal number (e.g., $23.5 million in revenue)
An end date (e.g., by October 1st)
A budget (e.g., our current planned media spend between now and the end date)

With this information, Recast will:

Track your pacing against the goal
Automatically update forecasts and your chance of hitting the goal based on your current plan
Automatically provide recommendations on how you can re-allocate budget to improve performance

💁 How to create a goal

To use the Goals tool, all you need are:

A KPI goal number (e.g., $23.5 million in revenue). This is the goal you want to meet.
An end date (e.g., by October 1st). This is the date by which you want to reach your goal.
A budget (see the section on Uploading a Budget and Using the Budget Builder under Forecasts)
Selections for spikes and lower funnel channels (Visit the FAQ for more information on lower funnel channels)

ℹ️ Note about start dates:

If the start date for the goal is on or before the last modeled date plus one day, Recast will be able to run forecasts and recommendations. (And if the end date is on or before the last modeled day, there is nothing to forecast!)
If the start date is for the goal is in the future, Recast will not be able to run forecasts nor automatic recommendations, but as soon as the start date is on or before the last modeled date plus one day, forecasts and automatic recommendations will be computed automatically

📆 When goals are updated

Goals - including forecasts, the probability of hitting your goal, and recommendations- are updated every week along with your model.

📤 Goal Outputs

Probability of hitting your goal

The goals tab provides a probabilistic target and a visual reference to how you are tracking towards your goal. This is calculated based on a projection of your spend and ROI/CPA across all your channels.

ℹ️ Note: 60% probability does not mean you will hit 60% of your goal. It means you are 60% likely to meet 100% of your goal.

Details

This table shows values for spend, your dependent variable, and marketing performance.

These values shown are:

“so far” — meaning for the period that we have data for

“forecasted” — meaning for the period that is being forecasted by the model between the model’s data and the end of the goal period

“projected” — which is a combination of the “so far” and “forecasted” data.

Expected performance against plan

This plot shows your goal as a straight line to your goal value over the goal period. Actual performance will be plotted between the goal’s start date and the last modeled date. Forecasted performance (and its associated uncertainty interval) will be plotted from the last modeled date plus one until the goal’s end date.

💡Recommendations

Recast has the capability to provide recommendations to improve your progress towards your goals. These recommendations are computed automatically whenever your goal is edited or the model is updated. To see these recommendations:

Scroll down to the “Recommendations” tab.
Select your Setting tab. The Conservative option will adhere most closely to your original budget, while the aggressive option will make large departures from your original budget.
View the proposed budget changes via the graphs.
(Optionally) Download optimized budget.

How to read the graphs.

These are the automatic recommendations Recast provides as a result of your goals and current budget. The Recast model forecasts how your current budget will perform against your goals and provides suggestions as to how you can modify your budget to improve your performance.

The graph on the left compares your current budget against the Recast recommended budget. Here you can see which channels Recast proposes you increase or decrease spend in. You can also read how close to optimal your spend is in each channel.
The graph on the right shows Recast’s proposed spend over time in each of your channels. In visualizing it in this way, you can see how to improve your spending over time in each of your channels to further realize your goal.
The summary at the bottom gives both forecasted and projected outcomes for the optimized budget
- Forecasted = in the future
- Projected = future + past covering the whole period

Constraints used by Automatic Recommendations

The automatic recommendations tool has some constraints that are useful to be aware of.

The total spend on every day needs to be the same
The spend in every cell day over day (channel x day) can’t change more than 0.8x for the conservative setting, 2x for the moderate setting and 10x for the aggressive setting.
The optimization is for total impact, not total impact in the time period, so it may be that you can optimize for total impact, but less of it will be realized in the time window.