Proving advertising ROI to the CFO — in finance language.
Closed-loop sales proof. Budget defended, then grown.
The situation.
The CFO is questioning the €8M annual retail advertising budget for an established FMCG brand. "Does this actually sell more product, or is it a vanity line item?" Marketing has been presenting reach and frequency. The CFO wants incremental revenue and ROI in finance language. One more "50M users, 170M impressions" deck will trigger a budget cut.
Why today fails.
The ad platform reports impressions, CPM, CTR and video views. The retail data team reports quarterly market share. Nobody connects them. Marketing cannot prove that the €8M budget generated a single incremental product sold. The CFO is right to question it. Marketing is defending the budget with faith, not evidence.
How it runs end-to-end.
A step-by-step walkthrough of what happens inside the platform — and the value delivered at each step.
- 01
Campaign setup with measurement built-in
Every Qommerce campaign automatically includes closed-loop measurement. No separate vendor, no manual data matching, no three-month delay. When targeting selects postcodes, matched control postcodes are constructed automatically.
Value deliveredMeasurement is default, not an add-on. No extra cost, no extra setup.
- 02
Closed-loop attribution — post-campaign
A clean room matches exposure data to retailer purchase transactions and reports per channel: CTV €1.2M spend → 180K incremental units → €540K revenue → 3.4x ROAS (product) / 4.8x (brand) → €1.85 cost per unit. DOOH €800K → 145K units → 4.1x / €1.52 per unit. Display €600K → 62K units → 2.3x / €2.68 per unit. Total €2.6M → 387K units → 3.4x ROAS → €1.86 per unit.
Value deliveredThe CFO sees exactly how many products each channel sold and what each one cost — products, not impressions.
- 03
Marketing Mix Modelling — all channels
MMM ingests spend from every channel — offline (TV, print, OOH), Qommerce campaigns, and other DSPs (TTD, DV360) — alongside seasonality, weather, competitive activity, price and distribution changes, and macro conditions. Of the €8M total spend, €5.2M generated measurable incremental sales and €2.1M sat in diminishing-return channels. Optimal reallocation: shift €600K from linear TV to CTV and €400K from display to DOOH near high-growth postcodes — projected +18% incremental revenue at the same total budget.
Value deliveredNot just "did advertising work?" — "how should we reallocate for maximum return?" in CFO language.
- 04
The board presentation
The CMO presents: every €1 in CTV generated €3.40 in incremental retail sales, validated by exposure-to-transaction matching; retail media generated 387K incremental units at €1.86 per unit; 23% of buyers in exposed postcodes were new-to-brand; MMM recommends reallocating €1M from underperforming to high-return channels for a projected +18% with zero additional budget. The CFO does not cut the budget. The CFO grows it.
Value deliveredMarketing transforms from a cost centre to a provable growth driver.
Benchmark ranges.
Drawn from the platform's capabilities. Use as projections, not guarantees.
- Campaigns with closed-loop measurement
- 100% (default)
- ROAS (product level)
- 2.5–5.0x
- MMM budget optimisation
- +15–25% projected
- Time from campaign end to sales report
- 2–3 weeks
The question, the bridge, the proof.
“When the CFO asks "does our advertising actually sell more product?" — what do you show them today?”
“What if every campaign automatically came with a report showing incremental units sold, cost per unit, and ROAS at the product level — validated by matching ad exposure to actual retailer purchase data?”
Keep reading.
Defending market share against a competitor attack.
Detect share decline within a week, diagnose the cause in seconds, and ship a hyperlocal response campaign in days — not the 12–16 weeks a traditional brief would take.
Launching a new product into the right postcodes — not the entire country.
A €2M, 12-week launch for a premium organic SKU. Find the postcodes with the right combination of category growth, purchasing power, distribution and weak competition — and concentrate the budget there.
Optimising trade promotion spend — store by store.
€12M of trade promotions across 30,000 stores, where 40–60% is wasted on stores already dominated or below the demand threshold. Score every store, match the right promo to each, and amplify with hyperlocal media.
Winning back lapsed shoppers — segmented by why they lapsed.
340,000 loyalty-identified shoppers haven't purchased in 90 days. Each represents €45 a year. Segment by lapse reason, run three parallel campaigns, and recover real revenue measured against retailer transactions.