Paid Media Forecast Template

Thank you for requesting the template. You can make a copy of it here.

The accompanying webinar which explains the different forecasting methodologies you can use to populate the forecast can be found here.

Anna, our head of paid media has put together this video explaining how to use the template so you can get the most out of the resource.

Prefer to read instead? Here’s an overview

The template has three main sections.

  • The data dump – this contains all your data from last year and year to date.
  • The media plan – which will collate all of the different types of media activity.
  • Individual media channel – This can be duplicated depending on the number of channels that you’re running.

Data dump

The first place to start is the data dump. You will need to take all of the data that you have for last year and year to date, broken down by month and channel and add it here.

This data is used to automatically populate the forecast template for a clear view of YoY monthly trends by activity type.

Once you’ve got your data in there you can move onto the individual channel tabs.

Individual media channels

To keep it simple there are two different colours of cells. Yellow cells are inputs and blue cells are calculated (so you won’t need to do anything to these.)

There are four different inputs that you can adjust to create your forecast. Impressions, CTR, CVR, CPC and AOV.

These can be completed using a mix of art and science. On the more scientific side you can use performance planner, and lost impression share from Google can also be used to project significant changes to budget in line with marketing activities.

On the more art side you can use last year’s data to project CVR, CTR and AOV, either drawing from averages or drawing by eye to take into consideration things that may effect these. For example an upcoming sale that may improve CTR or a new landing page that could improve CVR.

The activity type tabs can be duplicated as many times as you like to add additional channels (Social, Programmatic, etc) as well as splitting by intention (remarketing vs prospecting) for example.

Media plan

The final tab is the media plan, this collates all of the data together from the individual channels, giving you an annual forecast split by month, channel and intention.