Scenario Planner

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Overview

Scenario Planner lets you explore what may happen if you change spend across channels. Use it when you want to test a proposed budget shift before committing to it.

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What it does

Scenario Planner uses the same modeled response curves that support Budget Recommendations, but gives you control over the allocation. Instead of accepting the optimizer’s answer, you can adjust spend assumptions yourself and see the projected effect on incremental outcomes.

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What Scenario Planner is good for

Use Scenario Planner when you want to answer questions like:

• What happens if we shift budget from one channel into another?
• How sensitive is performance to a large increase in a specific channel?
• Does the mathematically optimal recommendation still make sense given business realities?
• How can we prepare a realistic version of the plan for finance or leadership?

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When to use it

Use Scenario Planner to:

• Test a budget reallocation idea
• Compare possible spend levels
• Understand sensitivity by channel
• Prepare for planning discussions
• Evaluate whether a recommendation fits business constraints

It is especially useful when a stakeholder already has a proposed change in mind and wants to see how that change compares with the optimizer’s recommendation.

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What the page looks like in practice

The page combines:

• scenario budget and selected-spend summary cards
• projected lift against baseline
• a selected-spend allocation donut
• a largest-channel highlight
• a ranked mix table showing how the selected scenario is composed

That makes it easy to explain not just the total spend level, but the actual shape of the scenario being tested.

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Scenario Planner vs Budget Recommendations

Budget Recommendations show the optimized allocation based on the latest model, the available budget, and the configured guardrails. Scenario Planner lets you explore your own what-if allocations. That difference matters:

• Budget Recommendations are model-led
• Scenario Planner is user-led

Both use the same underlying modeled relationships. They just answer different planning questions.

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How to read scenario outputs

Scenario outputs are projections, not commitments. That means you should use them to compare tradeoffs such as:

• expected incremental gain
• likely efficiency changes
• whether a proposed increase is pushing a channel closer to saturation
• whether a cut could reduce more incremental outcome than expected

The value is not just the number. The value is seeing the tradeoff before the money moves.

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Important interpretation note

Scenario outputs are projections. They should guide planning conversations, not replace business judgment. If a scenario looks attractive mathematically but conflicts with known brand, retail, seasonal, or contractual realities, treat it as an input to the conversation rather than a rule to follow blindly.