Table of Contents

Insights - ROAS Terminology & Key Concepts

Camela Thompson Updated by Camela Thompson

General Dashboard Functionality

For more information on the following topics, click on the linked topic:

Note on Filters

Return On Ad Spend is a very tricky thing to calculate, which means our model is fragile. The ROI estimate looks at all of the actual bookings/costs. The Make sure you DO NOT use the right-hand filter menu to filter the data:

Return on ad spend is extremely tricky to calculate and CaliberMind model is fragile - don't use filter menu

Filters that are available today, are locked at the top of the page:

CaliberMind available filters are always locked at the top of the screen
If you need a customization to the ROAS template, please reach out to Customer Success prior to building it on your own.

The Method Behind Return On Ad Spend

A lot of tools on the market offer digital advertising attribution by connecting your advertising platform to your CRM. The problem with this method is that those tools can't see other campaign activity (let alone sales, product, or channel activity). This means that 100% of the dollars associated with opportunities that can be linked to your digital advertising are allocated to digital advertising.

In other words, your digital attribution tools are allocating 100% of the "credit" to digital advertising when an opportunity can be linked to an ad. Unfortunately, this ignores all of the other touches your business has had to generate with the prospect in order to keep the opportunity moving toward a sale.

While CaliberMind will consistently show lower return on ad spend than your digital advertising tools, we believe that our method of calculating return is philosophically sound. The point of multi-touch attribution is to consider multiple activities when determining how to estimate the traction they received from an activity type.

Need help picking which attribution model to use? Read more about what the models do here.

Why Is This Report Cohorted?

Historically, CaliberMind has not cohorted the data in our traditional platform, but many marketers prefer to look at results by the timeframe the campaign activity happened. This allows them to see how campaigns are generating traction at each stage in the funnel. Looking at snapshots for a certain period has value, but is not as helpful when determining specific channels and campaigns and generating the right activity in any given period.

In other words, the ads that I run in January will generate clicks and form fills in January, but we may not see pipeline until February and bookings until May. In these new reports, January's campaign data will continue to evolve until May or June when the opportunities have had enough time to run through the sales process. When running cohorted reports, it's very important to keep your average full sales cycle (first touch to closed won) in mind when considering which time period you are analyzing and whether or not the numbers are "complete."

What Does Date Range Determine?

In order to calculate the impact of campaigns accurately, we have cohorted the data by the date the inbound touch takes place. That means that the data that displays in your dashboard is all derived from the Event Date or the date the inbound touch happened, regardless of when the opportunity was created, dollars were added, or the opportunity was closed.

For example, our digital advertiser runs a campaign in January 2022 and discontinues the campaign by the end of that month. In June 2022, the advertiser wants to see the final impact of their campaign and would see:

Metric

Value

Cost

$2,000

Leads (Inbound Event / Form)

5

Cost Per Lead

$400

Opportunities Sourced

3

Pipeline Attributed

$165,360

Opportunities Won

1

Bookings Attributed

$10,500

Return On Ad Spend (Bookings/Spend)

5.25x

Campaigns take time to produce Bookings! If our digital advertiser had looked at that same campaign at the end of January, they would have seen:

Metric

Value

Cost

$2,000

Leads (Inbound Event / Form)

5

Cost Per Lead

$400

Opportunities Sourced

1

Pipeline Attributed

$25,000

Opportunities Won

0

Bookings Attributed

$0

Return On Ad Spend (Bookings/Spend)

0x

CaliberMind App - Just breathe
Before you get angry with your digital marketer, always keep your sales cycle timeline in mind when reviewing Return On Ad Spend numbers. If you have a nine-month sales cycle from First Touch (first awareness event - or first inbound touch) to Closed Won, expect your numbers to fluctuate until nine to eleven months after the campaign is complete.

Terminology and Key Concepts (Definitions)

A

Attributed - The value attributed to touches related to the ad campaign or ad platform for the touches that took place during the given time period.

C

Clicks - The number of advertisement clicks for the designated ad platform/campaign as reported by the ad platform during the given period.

Contribution to Revenue (est.) - The value attributed to touches related to the ad campaign or ad platform times the probability the associated opportunity will close successfully.

Cost - The dollars spent associated with campaign activity (touches) that took place in the given period.

Cost Per Lead - The dollars spent associated with campaign activity (touches) that took place in the given period divided by the number of inbound touches recorded with a UTM string related to the designated ad platform/campaign for the given period. See Leads / Conversions for the "lead definition" and Cost for the "cost definition."

Cost per Opp Sourced - The dollars spent associated with campaign activity (touches) that took place in the given period divided by the number of distinct opportunity IDs associated with inbound touches that occurred prior to opportunity creation recorded with a UTM string related to the designated ad platform/campaign for the given period.

I

Impressions - The number of advertisement views for the designated ad platform/campaign as reported by the ad platform during the given period.

L

Leads / Conversions -The number of inbound touches recorded with a UTM string related to the designated ad platform/campaign for the given period. (Often referred to as "Hand-Raisers" or "Responses.")

O

Opps - The number of distinct opportunity IDs associated with inbound touches recorded with a UTM string related to the designated ad platform/campaign for the given period.

Opps Sourced - The number of distinct opportunity IDs associated with inbound touches that occurred prior to opportunity creation recorded with a UTM string related to the designated ad platform/campaign for the given period.

P

Pre-Opp Return On Ad Spend - The value attributed to touches related to the ad campaign or ad platform that took place prior to opportunity creation divided by the amount spent on all touches that happened during the given period on that ad platform or campaign.

R

Return on Ad Spend - The value attributed to touches related to the ad campaign or ad platform that have since Closed Won divided by the amount spent on all touches that happened during the given period on that ad platform or ad campaign.

Return on Ad Spend (est.) - The value attributed to touches related to the ad campaign or ad platform divided by the amount spent on all touches that happened during the given period on that ad platform or campaign.

Return on Investment (ROI) - The ROI estimate looks at the total actual booking costs within the CRM and or the Advertising platform.

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