Incremental revenue only becomes useful once it’s translated into a number an ad platform can act on. This matters because most ad platforms don’t take incremental revenue as input; they take a budget cap or target ROAS instead. Without that translation, a North Star metric never reaches the settings that control spend day to day. This video explains how to convert incremental revenue into a budget cap or target ROAS.
Why Incremental Revenue Only Matters Once It Reaches the Ad Platform
Incremental revenue only matters once it reaches the ad platform, because most campaign settings don’t have a field for “incremental revenue,” they only understand a daily budget or a target ROAS number. In this video, John Wallace, CEO of LiftLab, walks through the practical last step of becoming a LiftLab user: turning the coaching LiftLab provides, what to target, what creative and targeting to run, what level of investment to expect a given return from, into something an ad platform can actually execute against.
For campaigns where the lever is a straight spend number, that translation is simple: a daily budget cap, say $5,000 a day, adjustable upward to $10,000 if a promotion is running. For campaigns built around a performance target instead, LiftLab converts its own incremental revenue currency, the number that actually shows up in a marketing P&L, into a target ROAS instead, which might land at 3.1 or 2.7 depending on the brand and how competitive the relevant auctions are. Wallace notes that providing both currencies, incremental revenue for internal reporting and target ROAS or budget caps for in-platform execution, is something brands have specifically asked LiftLab to support.
In this video, you’ll learn:
How to translate marketing P&L insights into direct ad platform actions
The methodology behind using incremental revenue as a core measurement currency
Strategies for defining and adjusting daily budget caps based on promotional activity
How to successfully transition from budget-based spending to target ROAS levers
Why aligning in-platform currencies with brand business objectives is essential for success
TIME STAMPFull Video Transcript: Turning Incremental Revenue Into Target ROAS Explained
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In this video, LiftLab CEO John Wallace explains how to translate incremental revenue, LiftLab’s core currency, into a daily budget cap or target ROAS that an ad platform can act on.
[0:00 – 0:35] Transitioning into LiftLab
Now let’s talk a little bit about becoming a LiftLab user and trying to make this transition of, what is the information that I see in LiftLab, and how do I deploy it in an ad platform. Ultimately, LiftLab is talking about money. We’re talking about investment in terms of marketing, and we’re talking about income and return in terms of revenue. And so the information and the coaching that are coming out of LiftLab, the direction that we’re giving, is: here’s the play that’s on the field in terms of targeting and creative and that type of thing, here’s the level of investment that you should be targeting, and what the return is that you’ll get from that level of investment.
[0:35 – 0:54] Defining Daily Budget Caps
Level of investment is actually a spend, it’s a budget, and it is a target. In some of the ad platforms, you may be able to deploy that just as a daily budget cap. Hey, let’s have a target of spending $5,000 a day, and maybe if a promo is coming along, we’re going to revise that number up, maybe to $10,000 a day. That’s the type of information that teams are working with inside LiftLab.
[0:54 – 1:47] Setting Specific Campaign Goals
It could be that the way the campaigns are set up, your lever that you’re pulling on might be something that’s different. It might not just be a straight budget cap; it might be something like a target ROAS. In that case, what you need is, inside LiftLab we will translate that into our incremental revenue currency. That’s the currency that we work in: how much more incremental revenue will show up in my P&L. We feel like that’s the North Star, but sometimes the currency where you’re making spend decisions is in-platform dollars or in-platform euros. In that case, we need to turn our LiftLab incremental currency, our North Star, into something that’s in another space, and that’s pretty straightforward to do. What we do is we share that as a target ROAS. It may be that you want to spend $5,000 a day, but your target ROAS might be a 3.1 or 2.7. It just depends on your brand and the competitiveness and the nature of the auctions that you’re competing in. Providing both currencies is something that brands have asked us for, and it’s something that we’re happy to provide.
Key Lessons: Deploying Incremental Revenue Through Target ROAS
Investment alignment: LiftLab coaching helps teams determine the precise level of marketing spend needed to reach revenue goals.
Operational flexibility: Marketing teams can use daily budget caps for straightforward spending control while scaling up during specific promotional events.
Strategic goals: If campaign levers differ, the platform translates incremental revenue data into target ROAS metrics for more granular control.
Currency translation: Converting internal North Star metrics into in-platform dollars or euros ensures spend decisions reflect actual brand competitiveness and auction dynamics.
