Recast Knowledge Base
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Spend Forecasting API

The spend forecaster is a tool to turn a high level budget (or no budget at all!) into a daily, granular budget that follows patterns observed in your historical data.

To run a spend forecast, you supply:

  1. depvar_configurations - deployment_ids are the only thing that matter, other fields are optional and ignored.

  2. start_date

  3. end_date

  4. total_spend OR constraints - total_spend allows you to specify the total spend amount (Recast will spread it across channels based on historical patterns) or you can specify constraints more granularly in a constraint matrix.

  5. use_latest_deployments - whether to swap out the depvar_configurations deployments with the latest from the same dashboard or not

See Swagger for more information.

FAQ

What is the Spend Forecasting API for?
It converts high-level budget allocations into a detailed daily spending schedule based on historical patterns. This is useful when you have a total or channel-level budget but need day-by-day figures (e.g., as input to the Forecaster).

What's the difference between total_spend and constraints?

  • total_spend: Takes in a single overall budget amount as input. Recast distributes this across channels proportionally based on historical spend

  • constraints: a granular, matrix-based structure for specifying exact allocations per channel. Use this when you need precise control over how the budget is distributed