How Much Should You Spend In Top Of Funnel? Five Measurement Sources Later... They’re Still Guessing

“How much should we spend in top of funnel?”

You'd think there would be a number for that...

Especially when you're spending at the scale of one of the largest online retailers in the country.

Instead, here's how its marketing leader described the answer:

“There’s no one thing. It has to be like five different sources and you sort of make the best narrative out of it.”    

That's after years of investing in measurement.

They have their own attribution model.

They run conversion-lift studies across individual platforms.

They run geo-lift experiments.

They use MMM.

They have an internal marketing science team validating the methodologies behind all of it.

And top-of-funnel investment is still, in his words:

“More art than science.”

They're making “educated sort of assumptions and guesses” about how much they should spend.    

Because None Of The Five Sources Can Answer The Question Alone

Each methodology can tell you something useful...

But none gives him the answer he actually needs:

How much more should I put into top of funnel?

His attribution model helps with day-to-day decisions, but it's click-based and severely undercredits view-through media.

Geo tests give him stronger validation, but require weeks to run.

MMM gives him another perspective, but gets refreshed on a six-month cadence.

Brand studies can show movement in things like favorability and brand association...

But not necessarily how that exposure eventually turns into a customer.

So he takes what he can learn from all of them...

And constructs the best answer he can.

That's A Very Expensive Guess

Especially when top of funnel is supposed to create the customers you'll need months from now.

He described upper-funnel media as an “awareness driving engine.”

Get more people to see the brand...

Create interest...

Then eventually convert some of those people into sales.

The problem is the part in between.

“That trajectory of conversion is something which we are actively sort of not able to track in the best way.”    

So the question isn't whether top of funnel has value.

It's how much value.

How much should you spend?

Which channels deserve more?

Where is there still room to scale?

When have you spent enough?

At what point does another dollar stop producing enough incremental growth to justify itself?

Those are budget questions.

And “the best narrative” you can construct from five different sources is a difficult way to answer them.

More Measurement Doesn't Automatically Give You The Answer

This isn't a company trying to run a massive marketing budget from platform ROAS.

They've built an extraordinarily sophisticated measurement operation.

And they're still dealing with the same fundamental problem:

The answers they need are buried across methodologies that see different pieces of the business.

Adding another measurement source doesn't necessarily solve that.

It may just give you a sixth piece of evidence to reconcile.

The opportunity is to do something different...

Bring those signals together around the decision you're actually trying to make.

How Blueprint Answers “How Much Should I Spend In Top Of Funnel?”

We don't believe every marketing channel should be forced through one measurement methodology.

Some customer journeys can be observed directly.

Others can't.

Some advertising influences a customer long before another channel receives the conversion.

And some top-of-funnel advertising is better understood by looking at what happens to the business when investment changes.

That's why Blueprint approaches the problem in layers.

Influence helps reveal what contributed to the sale.

Impact Score helps reveal where the next opportunity is.

Optimizer helps determine what to do with the money.    

Not five disconnected answers you have to turn into a narrative...

A progression from what happened → where's the opportunity → what should I do next.

First... Did Top Of Funnel Help Create The Customer?

A lot can happen before somebody buys.

They may see a video.

Watch some UGC.

Encounter the brand again.

Search later.

Eventually convert through Google.

Traditional attribution may give Google the sale.

Blueprint's Influence looks further back through the digital journey to understand what else participated in creating that customer.

It helps answer:

What actually influenced the sale?

Not simply:

Who happened to get the final attribution?    

That's useful when you're trying to understand whether top-of-funnel media is participating in revenue creation...

But it still doesn't completely answer the budget question.

Then... How Much More Room Does It Have To Grow?

This is where Impact Score becomes especially relevant to the question this marketing leader couldn't cleanly answer.

Blueprint looks at changes in advertising spend relative to changes in downstream business results.

Once there's sufficient evidence of a relationship, Impact Score can help reveal which channels are having an outsized effect...

Where there's still room to scale...

Where returns may be diminishing...

And where additional investment may no longer make sense.    

Which gets much closer to the question that started this entire article:

How much should I spend in top of funnel?

Not because Impact Score magically turns an inherently messy customer journey into perfect attribution.

It doesn't need to.

The question is whether changing investment in that channel is associated with a meaningful change in the business...

And whether there's evidence that more opportunity remains.

Then You Still Have To Move The Money

Knowing there's opportunity doesn't automatically tell a media buyer what to do Monday morning.

That's the final step.

Blueprint's Optimizer is designed to turn the measurement into an actual media-buying decision.

You choose the outcome you care about, whether that's acquisitions, CPA, ROAS, LTV or another relevant metric...

And Blueprint can identify stronger and weaker performers from the campaign level down through ad sets and individual ads, then recommend where budget can be reallocated to produce more of that outcome.    

That's the distinction:

Impact Score helps you know where the opportunity is.

Optimizer helps you move the money.    

You Don't Need To Throw Away The Five Sources

Geo testing can still be useful.

MMM can still be useful.

Lift studies can still be useful.

Your existing attribution can still be useful.

Blueprint doesn't require ripping apart the measurement environment you've already built.

It connects to the platforms and data sources already capturing what's happening, without requiring another Blueprint pixel or PII.    

The goal isn't to replace five methodologies with a sixth.

It's to stop making the marketing leader manually turn all that evidence into “the best narrative” every time somebody asks where the next dollar should go.

Because at some point...

The answer to:

“How much should we spend in top of funnel?”

Should become more useful than:

“Here's our best educated guess.”

Find Out How Much Your Top Of Funnel Can Actually Absorb...

If deciding how much to invest in top of funnel still means pulling together five different sources and making the best educated guess you can...

Blueprint can help you see what's influencing sales, where your media is actually having an impact, and where there's still room to scale.

So the next time somebody asks:

“How much should we put into top of funnel?”

You have something better than a narrative.

FAQ

How do you determine how much to spend on top-of-funnel marketing?

There isn't one universally correct percentage. The more useful question is whether your top-of-funnel channels are contributing to downstream results, whether they still have room to scale, and how additional investment compares with other opportunities in your media mix. Blueprint's Impact Score is designed specifically to help answer those questions.    

Why is top-of-funnel marketing difficult to measure?

Top-of-funnel media often influences customers without producing an immediate click or conversion. That makes click-heavy attribution models less able to capture its contribution and can leave marketers piecing together evidence from attribution, lift studies, geo testing, brand studies and other methodologies.    

What is the difference between Blueprint Influence and Impact Score?

Influence helps reveal the digital journey leading to a sale and which channels participated before the final conversion. Impact Score looks at the relationship between changes in advertising investment and downstream business results to identify where advertising is having an effect and where additional opportunity may exist.    

Does Blueprint replace MMM, geo testing or incrementality studies?

No. Blueprint can work alongside an existing measurement stack. The goal is not to force every question through one methodology, but to make the signals already available more useful for ongoing cross-channel decisions.

Can Blueprint recommend where marketing budget should move?

Yes. Blueprint's Optimizer can identify stronger and weaker performers and recommend reallocations based on the outcome a marketer wants to improve, including acquisitions, ROAS, LTV and other relevant metrics.