Return on Ad Spend – or ROAS – is the most important KPI in media buying. However, few advertisers or agencies have a system in place to predict ROAS while media planning. Without ROAS, you can’t treat media as an investment nor truly optimize your media investment decisions.

To solve this problem, Bionic just added powerful new ROAS prediction automation to its media planning software.

ROAS is the Most Important KPI for Media

In May 2021, the Association of National Advertisers published a report “Media KPIs That Matter.” This report reveals the results of a survey that identified and ranked the most used KPIs for media, the most important KPIs for media, and the new/emerging KPIs for media. This ANA report also calls out those KPIs considered to be “head fakes” – commonly used KPIs that are useless or deceptive.

Of the 39 media KPIs identified in the survey, ROAS ranked #1 as the most important KPI for media. 71% of respondents rated ROAS a 5 on a scale 1=least important to 5=most important. ROAS is clearly the most important KPI for advertisers.

ROAS is the Growth KPI

Advertisers love ROAS because this KPI demonstrates how advertising contributes to short-term business growth. It shows the value of advertising in financial terms that are easy to understand – “for every dollar we spent on advertising, here’s the immediate value we got in return.”

Renee Milliaressis, chief media officer at Colgate-Palmolive Company, says in the ANA Report, “ROAS has increased in importance as we have ever greater ability to track and adjust campaigns on key platforms in real time. Understanding the relationship between ROAS and ROI is foundational to making value-based decisions.”

ROAS Has Been Missing from Media Planning

The ANA KPI report also reveals that ROAS is the fourth most used KPI in advertising.  However, ROAS is typically used to track performance after the ads have run. By then it’s too late – your ads have already run. Your advertising budget is already spent. You can’t make any changes.

ROAS is seldom used in the media planning process when media investment decisions are made.

Good media governance requires you to “call your shots” and set ROAS expectations before each ad is placed. This requires you to predict ROAS and other business outcomes during the media planning process. And advertising best practices require you to measure your actual performance against your predictions.

Without good automation, estimating ROAS and measuring performance against predictions is a cumbersome task. This burden may explain why using ROAS in media planning is not yet a common practice as it should be.

Bionic Now Automates ROAS Predictions While Media Planning

With its latest software upgrade, Bionic added new capabilities to predict Return on Ad Spend while media planning. Bionic now automatically estimates each of your conversion funnel KPIs, your growth, and your ROAS on each of your media placements.

No other media planning software has this capability.

When creating a media plan in Bionic, you select your media KPIs and performance goals. These goals can be based on advertising efficiency (“cost per whatever”) or advertising effectiveness (funnel conversion rates). You can also set your default Average Conversion Value or Revenue Per Conversion.

After setting your KPIs, Bionic will estimate each of your conversion funnel KPIs, your growth, and your ROAS for each of your media placements directly within in your media plan. These calculations are fully automated, requiring no extra work.

These ROAS calculations are flexible. Bionic enables you to customize parameters on a placement-by-placement basis.

How to Get the ROAS Estimator for Media Planning

If you’re already using Bionic for Agencies, you already have this new ROAS estimator. We upgraded your account for free as part of your subscription, which includes upgrades like this. You also get unlimited free support and training. Please let us know how we can help you to get the most from these new tools.

If you’re not yet using Bionic, you can request a trial through our website here: https://www.bionic-ads.com/agencies/