How a precise timing structure drives material differences in marketing efficiency

"The marketing calendar itself is simple. Brands need to invest in the typical tentpole events like Prime Day, back-to-school and the holidays. They also have their own key sales periods, like the beginning of the winter season for a company that makes jackets or for a CPG brand heavily tied to Thanksgiving. While marketers know they need to plan around these events, it's harder for them to determine how much to spend during the peak of the event itself versus the weeks leading up to it."

"Relying on a gut feeling when it comes to identifying the right investment can lead to over-investment in some weeks and gaps in others. Inconsistent pacing leads to blind spots in what drives impact while also burning budget. Using a data-backed approach can take the guesswork out of flighting ad campaigns - an advertising scheduling strategy that alternates periods of high-intensity ad activity (or flights) with periods of no activity - as it helps determine what is actually driving impact. In fact, industry leaders have found that finding the right so-called flighting mix can result in better ROI, with returns on some channels leading to an increase of up to 81%."

"Most marketers today are still using ROAS or ROI to determine impact. While ROI measures the total return on marketing spending across all investment levels, marginal return on investment (mROI) specifically focuses on the incremental return generated from additional spending, offering a more nuanced view of marketing efficiency at different spending thresholds. ROI tells marketers how effective their marketing dollars are overall, while mROI reveals what they'll get back from the next dollar spent."

The marketing calendar centers on tentpole events like Prime Day, back-to-school and the holidays, plus brand-specific sales periods tied to seasons or holidays. Marketers struggle to decide how much to spend during event peaks versus the preceding weeks. Relying on intuition often causes over-investment in some weeks and gaps in others, producing inconsistent pacing and wasted budget. A data-backed approach to flighting ad campaigns—alternating high-intensity ad periods with inactivity—identifies what truly drives impact and can boost ROI, with some channels seeing increases up to 81%. Marginal return on investment (mROI) reveals incremental returns from additional spend, offering finer optimization than overall ROI. Analysis across 400+ brands and $42B in historical investment compared flighted mROI with optimized mROI.

Read at Digiday