When Did the Future Stop Counting?

Most media buyers would recognize the absurdity immediately and might nevertheless spend Friday afternoon preparing a budget recommendation which does something remarkably similarFor that buyer and the marketing leader who must defend the recommendation the dilemma is this how do you divide the next dollar between capturing existing demand and developing new customers when the evidence accepted at the budget meeting favors the results which arrive fastestSophisticated buyers generally know better than to believe in lasttouch attribution but the operating arrangements of the business can reward it long after everyone in the room has disavowed it A weekly report is required an acquisition target must be met each channel must demonstrate its own return Together these reasonable requirements can encourage us to harvest the effects of earlier advertising without adequately accounting for the cost of replacing themImagine being asked to shift money from broaderreach video into search and retargeting because the latter reports a lower acquisition cost You suspect that some of those acquisitions depend on preferences developed elsewhere in the plan but cannot quantify that contribution on the same timetable or with the same apparent precision How do you defend the allocation without asking the client to accept a matter of faithCall the underlying tendency the Now Bias an organizational preference for effects which become legible soon enough to influence the next decision The future is not denied it is invited to return when it has a receiptEven an incrementality test can answer a question narrower than the one confronting the buyer if its observation period captures an immediate response but not subsequent purchasing or its headline result combines existing customers with the new customers the business needs to attractThis is why I would put newcustomer growth near the center of the allocation discussion rather than leaving it as an interesting supplementary statistic after the overall ROAS number has settled the argument A plan can become increasingly efficient at reaching familiar customers without expanding the population of buyers and for a while the attractive return can make that distinction less conspicuousThe useful question is whether an investment produces additional new customers at an economically sensible cost and whether their subsequent behavior supports the value assigned to acquiring them Not every purchase labeled amp8220newtobrandamp8221 was caused by the advertising some people would have become customers anyway We need a credible comparison and an agreed definition of amp8220newamp8221 including the purchasehistory window and the limits of the available dataRetention remains valuable but its contribution should be distinguishable from acquisition before we decide which activity deserves the next dollar Nor should we infer the effect from a budget labeled amp8220brandamp8221 or amp8220performanceamp8221 a video exposure can help produce a purchase now and strengthen a preference for later while a search advertisement can introduce an unfamiliar brand The consumeramp8217s response is not obliged to conform to our departmental organizationThe answer is neither to abandon accountability nor simply to become more patient It is to make allocation decisions using evidence of incremental business contribution observation periods appropriate to the purchasing process and newcustomer growth rather than principally the speed or volume of attributed conversionsBuyer and client should agree before the campaign begins on what evidence would justify self does moving money improve the results of the whole plan rather than merely improve the report for one channelIntermediate reviews should be distinguished from final judgments with enough time allowed to observe the categoryamp8217s purchasing cycle Where longerterm value remains uncertain that uncertainty should be visible rather than replaced by either an optimistic lifetimevalue assumption or the equally convenient assumption that everything beyond the reporting window is worth nothingMy own work at RMTLabs makes me especially interested in how motivational alignment can help attract new customers and I am hardly a neutral observer But our work should face the same test as anyone elseamp8217s does it bring additional people into the brand beyond what the comparison would have produced and do the economics justify the investment An explanation of why something should work is the beginning of the inquiry not its conclusionThere is nothing particularly visionary about believing in the future The more consequential achievement is arranging the present so that a buyer can invest in it without being penalized for failing to produce all of its benefits by Friday while still being required to demonstrate that those benefits eventually arriveWe should certainly inspect the garden compare methods account for the water and investigate plants which are not growing We should also allow the people responsible for the harvest to distinguish a failing crop from one which our own evaluation procedure has prevented from bearing fruitamp160Building HighPerforming TeamsNEW podcast Exploring internal capacity building the strength to hold more in work ampamp lifeLife throws us constant challenges changes and uncertainty In Episode 23 Bill and Natalie explore a fundamental question Is the challenge itself hard or have we yet to build our internal capacity to hold it Using the analogy of lifting weights at the gym they cover why life ampamp work don39t necessarily get easier but instead we get stronger as our ability to meet life grows by putting in our daily quotrepsquot If you want to stop fighting the external noise and instead focus on selfleadership and building the internal muscle to handle whatever comes your way this episode may just be for you Podcast length 57 minutes Watch the VideoPosted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership selfpublishing platformClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillageorgMyersBizNet

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When Did the Future Stop Counting?

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Bill Harvey

Tim Spengler Read Your Third Brain. Here’s What He Wanted to Ask Jack Myers. - By Jack Myers

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When Did the Future Stop Counting?

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