Media Forecaster

Media Forecaster recommends how to split a marketing budget across your channels, tactics, and campaigns for a period that you choose. You set one goal, a budget, and the media that the plan can use. Media Forecaster then forecasts the period with your marketing mix models and returns a plan that you can compare with your current spend mix.

To open Media Forecaster, select Media Forecaster in the Marketing group of the sidebar.

What can you do with Media Forecaster?

Media Forecaster answers three kinds of budget question. Each kind is a goal family in the product.

Goal family	What the plan does
Grow on a fixed budget	The plan spends the whole budget and maximizes the outcome.
Hit a target	The plan reaches the target that you set for the least spend.
Hold efficiency	The plan spends as much as possible while the efficiency ratio stays at the target that you set.

The goals that you see depend on the active models of your account. Each goal carries the name of a modeled metric.

Modeled numbers, not reported numbers

The forecasts and the outcomes in a plan come from your marketing mix models. A plan does not use the outcome that an ad platform reports. The spend in Actual to date is your recorded spend.

What does the Media Forecaster page show?

The Media Forecaster page shows a daily recommendation and the list of plans that people on your team created. The recommendation card shows the estimated lift and the channels with the largest lift.

(opens a larger view)

The Estimated lift box and the Top channels to grow box of the Default Plan Recommendations card

• Default Plan Recommendations is a card at the top of the page. Media Forecaster generates the recommendation automatically each day from your default settings. Select Create plan to open the New plan wizard with the same default settings.
• The plans list shows the name, status, mode, goal, date range, owner, and last update of each plan. You can search, filter, and sort the list.
• New plan starts a plan from the beginning.

How does a plan get its numbers?

A plan compares three sets of numbers over the same planning period: the baseline, the optimized plan, and your actual results to date.

1. You selectReference periodPast dates that set which media is eligible and the current spend of each row.
2. Media Forecaster buildsBaselineThe reference spend mix, scaled to your budget and forecast over the planning period.
3. Media Forecaster recommendsOptimizedThe budget moved between rows, inside your spend flexibility and limits, to reach your goal.
4. So farActual to dateReported spend and modeled outcome so far in the planning period, paced against Optimized or Baseline.

How Media Forecaster builds the numbers in a plan. Baseline, Optimized, and Actual to date use the same models and the same planning period.

Read How Media Forecaster builds a plan for the full explanation.

What are the plan statuses?

A plan has one of four statuses. A plan runs in the background, so you can leave the page while the plan runs.

Status	Meaning
Queued	The plan is waiting to start.
Processing	The plan is running in the background.
Ready	The plan finished and the results are available.
Failed	The plan did not finish. The plan page says what happened and how to fix the plan.

Next steps

Build your first planA lesson with one fixed path, from New plan to a plan that runs.

Create and run a planFollow the five steps of the New plan wizard.

Read plan resultsCheck the goal, the budget moves, and the pacing of a plan.

Manage plansFind, duplicate, rename, share, and delete plans.

Fix a failed planFind the cause of a failed plan and run the plan again.

Plan settingsThe options and limits of the Timeline, Goal, and Budget steps.

Media and run settingsThe options and limits of the Media step and the Review & run step.

Plans list and plan resultsEvery status, card, column, and menu of the plans list and the plan page.