Cross-channel budgeting plans (Beta)

Google Analytics cross-channel budgeting helps you optimize paid channel investments and track their performance.  Projection plans monitor how your advertising channels are projected to perform against key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs include budget, conversions, and revenue. Identify areas for improvement and optimize your in-flight budgets. Scenario planner analyzes predicted return on investment (ROI) at different budget levels and creates optimized media plans for future initiatives that drive the highest return based on your defined budget. Use both together to continually plan and optimize your media budgets.

With these tools, you'll be able to answer critical questions like, "Is my spend on track?", "How many future conversions are forecasted based on my planned spend?" and “How should I allocate my budgets to maximize revenue and ROI?”

This tool is for planning purposes and will not impact budgets or spend in your connected accounts.

View reports

1. Sign in to Google Analytics .
2. From the left menu, select Advertising.
3. Click  Budgeting.

To view the report, navigate to the Advertising section and link your Google Ads account to your property. Additionally, the Advertising section where the report is found is only available on the desktop version of Google Analytics. This report is in a closed alpha currently.

Check property eligibility for using cross-channel budgeting

If your property isn't eligible for cross-channel budgeting, you can view the required details for the eligibility of  your property's status.

To use these reports, your property will need to meet the following criteria:

• Conversion data: Cross-channel budgeting requires at least one year of data for a conversion to be eligible for Projection or Scenario planner plans. Key events are not compatible.
  Web conversions are not compatible. 
• Data compatibility for primary channel grouping:Cross-channel budgeting uses your primary channel group. This can be a custom or default channel grouping. Channels with cost are required and must be data compatible. Learn more about data compatibility . 
  • Note: If you change the definition of your primary channel group, it may take up to 2 days for your plans to be updated using the new definition.
• Cost data:Cross-channel budgeting requires at least one year of cost data from at least two channels (Google and non-Google). Link to your Google products to bring in historical data for Google integrations. You can use data import to upload cost data for non-Google integrations or other data sources . After uploading cost data, it can take up to one day to see a status update on the budgeting eligibility page for your property. If you are mapping your primary channel groupings using campaign data, we recommend ensuring you upload data for the "Campaign field” in your data imports.

After you meet the requirements, Google evaluates your models. This can take up to 2 days. Checks include cost import correctness and model quality. More details are under Model Methodology . You can create plans after the checks pass.

Deleting or making changes to your product links, cost data import, or channel grouping could impact your budgeting models.

Budgeting overview page

Overview provides quick access to your saved budgeting plans and the data sources that power your budgeting models. This page contains:

• A table that shows:
  • Most recently created or modified plans.
  • Product links : Google products you are currently linked to, for example, Ads, Display & Video 360, or any other product.
  • Cost import : Usage, date of last upload, and file match rate.
    • Note: Cost import is how customers can upload cost data for non-Google campaigns and channels.
• Manual Integrations (Third party integrations) shows static text that explains how to set up manual integrations to bring in ad events from third party campaigns. Longer term this section will dynamically show which platforms have manual integration available for budgeting models. 

Projection and Scenario planner

Projection overview

Create Projection plans to view how you are projected to perform against a target key performance indicator (KPI) per each channel, and optimize budgets based on performance for in flight initiatives. 

Projection plans answer these questions:

• Am I on track to spend my plan budget?
• Am I on track to drive my target number of conversions (ex: purchase)?
• Am I on track to drive my target revenue?
• Which channels are over / under performing and where should I shift budget to optimize overall performance?

To create a Projection plan:

1. Enter a plan name. For example: My Q4 plan
2. Enter a planning period. For example: Q4’25
3. Select the target key performance indicator (KPI) that you would like your plan to optimize toward. 
   • Meet Budget Targets: To spend the entire budget during the plan period.
   • Drive Conversions: To drive a certain number of conversions during the plan period.
   • Maximize Revenue: To drive a certain amount of revenue during this plan period.
4. Enter a target KPI value for the key performance indicator you selected.

You can view the list of all conversions that are eligible for your budgeting models based on the amount of historical data available. 

Once you create a projection plan, you’ll see how you are pacing toward your defined key performance indicator. The chart at the top of the plan shows your projected performance over the date period you defined when creating your plan. The solid line shows the performance to date, and the dotted line indicates how your plan is projected to perform. 

The report shows model confidence bounds via the shaded area in the line chart. If there are significant changes (fluctuations) that aren't explained by seasonality or holiday effects, the confidence intervals may be wide. This means the learned behavior for the channel has changed significantly, and the forecasting model needs time (more data) to correctly learn the new patterns. The data table shows the projected performance per channel and can help you make decisions on cross-channel budget optimization. 

If there are new or changing budgets for your Projection plans, you can create a Scenario plan to determine how to allocate the remaining budget.

These projection outputs are estimates based on our model, not guarantees of performance.

Scenario planner overview

Use Scenario planner to create comprehensive plans to maximize effectiveness across channels for quarterly or annual media plans. You can flexibly create and view scenarios to understand ROI at different budget levels and ultimately create future media plans that drive the highest return based on your defined budget. Once these plans are live, you can understand pacing and projected performance by jumping back into the projections report. With the Scenario planner, you’ll be able to answer critical questions like “How should I allocate my budgets to maximize revenue and ROI?”

To create a Scenario planner plan:

1. Enter a plan name. For example: My Q4 plan
2. Enter a planning period. For example: Q4’25
3. Select the target key performance indicator (KPI) that you would like your plan to optimize toward. 
   • Drive Conversions: To drive the most number of conversions  possible with my defined budget.
   • Maximize Revenue: To drive the most revenue  possible with my defined budget.
4. Enter a target KPI value for the key performance indicator you selected.

You can view the list of all conversions that are eligible for your budgeting models based on the amount of historical data available. Note you can only select one conversion at a time. 

Once you create a Scenario planner plan, you will see a response curve at the top of your plan that shows the optimal budget allocation to drive the highest ROI across channels for your defined budget. You can interact directly with the curve to understand optimal allocation and ROI at different budget levels. You will also see projected performance, which shows how we think your plan will perform if no optimizations are made. 

You can create plans based on future dates only, they cannot have a start date in the past. If you go into your plan in the middle of or at the end of the date range you defined, you will see the same response curve generated when you originally created the plan. Optimizations are tightly linked to market conditions at the time of plan creation. Additionally, the response curve is a model based on historical data and chosen plan parameters - unless you actively modify any of the plan settings (budget, date range, target metrics, etc.), the mathematical model underlying the curve doesn't change. To see an updated response curve and projection, create a new plan. Regularly generating new plans based on updated data is the best way to make the most of the tool. 

Once these plans are live, you can understand pacing and projected performance by creating and monitoring a Projection plan.

The Scenario planner outputs are estimates based on our model, and not guarantees of performance.

Data sources

• Attribution data from your Google Analytics property (Data-driven attribution)

• Aggregate campaign information from all relevant integration data via product links and data import 
• Offline data is also included if you’re using offline import.
• Paid channels only (organic channels are not included in budgeting results) 

Dimensions

You can view plan outputs at the primary channel group level. If you have not set a custom channel group as your primary, then the default channel grouping is your primary. You will only view dimensions where we have enough data to run a projection model, so you may not see all of your advertising channels appear immediately. Projection plans show forecasted performance for paid channels that have high model confidence based on data availability. 

Your primary channel group must be data compatible to be eligible for budgeting. If you make a change that is not data compatible with budgeting, you will return to the eligibility page. Once you update your channel grouping to meet the eligibility criteria, you will see all of your previously saved plans.

If you change the definition of your primary channel group, it can take up to two days for your models to update. You can check your property’s change history to see changes made to primary channel grouping definitions. 

Metrics

The report includes the following metrics :

• Conversions: The number of times your users triggered a conversion.
• Ads cost: The total amount you paid for your ads.
• Cost per conversion: The total cost divided by the number of conversions.
• Total revenue: The sum of revenue from purchases, subscriptions, and advertising (Purchase revenue plus Subscription revenue plus Ad revenue).
• Return on ad spend: The revenue for selected conversions divided by the total cost for your ads.

Model methodology

Budgeting in Google Analytics uses your property’s historical data driven attribution as the primary input to a Bayesian regression model to forecast the optimal total budget per channel over the defined time period. This regression model is inspired by Google’s Meridian , and is based on your property’s attribution data.  

Bayesian regression modeling is a statistical analysis technique that measures the impact of historical marketing activities to guide future budget planning decisions. The Google Analytics Budgeting Bayesian regression model combines prior knowledge (your property’s data driven attribution historical data) with signals learned from data to estimate media effects. Budgeting in Google Analytics fundamentally  considers what would have happened if the marketing spend had been different based on Data-driven Attribution priors (as an attribution input) and response curves (as a Bayesian regression output), ultimately recommending optimal budget allocation based on how marketing spend affects KPIs (revenue and conversions).

We use a time-series model to forecast the spending patterns on a per-channel basis. Revenue and conversions are estimated from response curves learned from historical data in the Google Analytics property. Based on the response curves and forecasted spend, we estimate revenue and conversions for future time periods. The ROI estimates are consistent with data driven attribution. Models are trained on 12 months of data to account for seasonality. 

Budgeting models show results for paid channels where there is high model confidence based on the historic data availability. Model confidence levels are determined by a backtesting methodology for cost per channel - we run models on historic time periods to understand the accuracy of your property’s budgeting model. Similarly, for conversions and revenue, we look at historic time periods to see how well the trained model's channel-level estimates match the historical Data-driven attributed revenue/conversions. Typically, low model confidence for a channel means there were gaps in cost data, changes in conversion implementation, changes in your primary channel grouping, or deleted conversions / channels. 

Recommendations and insights

We will share recommendations and insights at the top of your plans that summarize the plan output. Recommendations on your Projection plan will include details on your most efficient and least efficient channels and recommendations on your Scenario planner plans will include optimal budget allocation and shifts.