How To Budget For Advertising?
"To be prepared is half the victory"
How to Budget for Advertising?
The #1 question clients ask is: how do I budget for advertising? It comes in many forms. “How much do I need to spend?” “How can I “make a splash” in a new market?” Or just “How much is it going to cost…?” Our Budget Blueprint℠ answers this question for any organizational leader seeking a systemized answer for how to budget for advertising.
If you’re feeling unsure about what it takes to lead in your category, or meet/exceed growth targets, you’re definitely not alone. Your paid media budget might deserve re-examination. Advertising measurement firm Nielsen says 50% of media plans are underfunded [1]. But whatever the figure, the truth is: Most brands don’t know how to budget for paid media.
1. Budgeting - a Perennial Problem
Most brands — even great ones — lack a clear, defensible process for budgeting paid media. After content, creative, production, overhead, partnerships, and runaway affiliate costs, paid media is often an afterthought or mis-calibrated relative to the outcomes it’s expected to deliver. The root issue: outside the marketing suite, paid media is rarely viewed as a revenue driver.
Budgeting for advertising is a near-universal pain point. Teams spend hours compiling numbers, only for the final budget to be based on guesswork: the leftover line item on a balance sheet, or simply whatever was spent last year or last quarter. We call this inertia — and inertia is a trap. Even if a media budget stays constant, the market, the consumer, and the competitive landscape never do. Which raises the real question: how should forward-thinking brands properly budget for paid media?
2. The Budget Blueprint℠ Process
The Criterion Global Budget Blueprint℠ is a structured market-sizing and media-forecasting process that defines a defensible, capital-efficient media investment range. Brand leaders use this output to guide smarter budgeting and allocation decisions across markets and lines of business. Our methodology adapts to each brand’s stage of growth, target audience, addressable market, and competitive context.
There is no single “formula.” Instead, we apply a systematized set of budget-allocation methods tailored to each client. Some are proprietary; others triangulate standardized market and category data to establish a rational, evidence-based range. Since 2014, we’ve delivered Budget Blueprints℠ for organizations spanning new venture-backed startups to—quite literally—the largest advertiser on the planet. This practice blends media-strategy consulting with best-in-class planning and buying operations. As an independent agency, our perspective remains neutral and uniquely positioned to serve clients’ long-term interests.
Market Factors
- Media consumption vs. monetization
- Market-specific media penetration
- User acquisition strategy + viability
- Digital disruption to legacy media
- Emerging platforms, mitigating risk
“Externalities”
- Pricing strategy: modeling and advisory
- Media monetization + product advisory
- Platform integration + systems
- Trade desks + programmatic impact
- Eurozone/ multinational data (GDPR)
Utilization + Allocation
- Benchmarking
- Measurement Methods
- Non-media Factors (tech, etc.)
- Variable costs + contingencies
The Value Proposition
The Budget Blueprint℠ is our #1 most requested brand-side service in our media consulting practice. (#2 is advising financial + investment analysts studying brand-side advertising budgets.)
3. Budget Blueprint℠ Value Proposition
So what do you get with the Budget Blueprint℠? The answer depends on your specific needs, however, the core is development of a defensible paid media investment range based on your brand’s stage of growth, markets, and core business attributes. Along the way, the Budget Blueprint℠ may also address:
- What’s the incremental cost of incremental SOM?
- What is the cost/benefit of targeting approaches?
- Where might I get the best bang for the buck?
- Where is my category’s ad spend trending?
- Where might I save? What is our best addressable market, vis-à-vis competitors
4. Before + After
Before you knew how to budget for paid media:
- Your paid media buying campaign analyses always ended with a question mark: Did we succeed? Could our CPA have been better? Are we being outspent? Did we calibrate our paid media allocation correctly?
- Paid media buying viewed as a cost, rather than investment. This perpetuates continued uncertainty, making it hard to defend marketing’s efforts.
After the Criterion Global Budget BlueprintSM:
- Clearly see how paid media investment and allocation aligns with the brand you hope to become.
- Documentation is clean, clear, and the budget range “ask” is defensible.
- You have guidance on how to approach media planning to using resources efficiently and effectively.
- In the event of a surplus or “plus-up” budget, you can defend how to deploy these funds to maximum effect. In the face of budget cuts, you have clarity on how to prioritize and adapt.
- Above all: the Budget BlueprintSM is an invaluable tool to develop organizational alignment across teams to justify and win buy-in on paid media planning allocation and investment. With a Budget BlueprintSM, paid media isn’t just a line item. It’s an investment in the future of your brand.