We added a new channel. How can I add it to my Recast model?

If you have started (or plan to start) spending money into a new marketing channel, you’ll want to get that channel added to Recast in order to start tracking the effectiveness of the money spent in that channel. To add a channel, please follow these steps:

1. Add a column to your Recast data export with the name of the channel and the amount of spend in that channel for each day (follow the same format as your currently existing channels).

2. Email your Recast contact with the name of the channel, the first day that spend will be happening in the channel, and a short description of how the channel works.

3. We need to configure the channel in your model on the Recast side. The easiest way to configure your model is for you to identify what existing channel the new channel is most similar to. We’re looking for similarity in three respects:

   1. ROI - your expectations that the channel will drive similar levels of ROI
   2. Time shift - you expect the returns from spend to take a similar amount of time in each channel
   3. Size of channel - you expect that you can spend similar amounts into the channel before seeing decreasing returns

If you expect the new channel to have similar ROI to channel A, similar time shift to channel B, and similar size to channel C, let us know that too and we can use that (although often a single channel is comparable in ROI, time shift, and size).

The new channel can appear in your Recast dashboard as soon as you have some historical spend and once we have re-run your model. However, we recommend giving the channel some time to gather data before reading into the results. Although it depends on a variety of factors (especially how much you’re spending into the channel), a good rule of thumb is collecting six weeks of data in order to get a read. Prior to six weeks you should expect larger-than-normal revisions in the effectiveness of the channel as the model tries to disambiguate the channel’s effectiveness from seasonal effects.

Note: we don’t recommend waiting six weeks to send us the data. Instead, we prefer we get it in the model as soon as there is historical data. If the new channel data is not present in the model, the credit due to the new channel will be allocated among various other channels and will bias your results. This is particularly important if you are spending a lot in the new channel.

A note on timing

Once Recast is aware of the new channel and has access to the new data, we will need time to configure and incorporate the new channels in a model build. If you can provide the old data format as well as the new data format, we can continue to update your model using the old format while we configure your model to use the new format. If providing both is not feasible, we may not be able to refresh you model using new channels until several days after we receive the data. To learn about your options for data transfer visit our Data guide.