Advertising Budget Decision Meeting Worksheet

Use this worksheet when a campaign readout, attribution report, MMM, lift test, brand study, or attention dashboard is being used to justify a renewal, budget shift, scale, cut, repair, or stronger test.

The worksheet turns a meeting into an evidence record. It does not decide whether a campaign worked by itself. It makes the requested action, evidence rung, included rows, excluded rows, threshold, uncertainty, and next test visible before the recommendation is written.

1. Decision context

Decision requested today

Budget, package, channel, market, or flight affected

Meeting owner, date, and final approver

Decision deadline and consequence of waiting

Action under consideration

Repair tracking, creative, destination, pacing, or lead routing. Renew the same scope with bounded language. Shift mix among packages, placements, audiences, devices, or creative. Increase, reduce, or pause material spend. Add a lift test, geo test, holdout, calibration check, or better baseline.

2. Evidence rung

Select the highest rung the evidence clears. If a critical evidence lane is weaker, use the weaker rung for the final recommendation.

0. Missing source trail: totals or summaries without the fields needed to inspect the claim. 1. Delivery and exposure evidence: clean delivery, viewability, frequency, pacing, and quality checks. 2. Observed response evidence: qualified visits, leads, conversions, matches, or survey responses after quality filters. 3. Directional comparison: prior period, matched context, benchmark, model estimate, or survey-control result with caveats. 4. Preplanned comparison: holdout, matched market, fixed baseline, or readout rule defined before results were visible. 5. Repeatable decision-grade evidence: several credible tests, calibrated model evidence, stable operations, and clear uncertainty ranges.

Weakest material evidence lane

Strongest supportable claim today

3. Rows used and rows excluded

Rows used in the decision

Rows excluded from the decision

Quality flags that may change interpretation

Result after exclusions or sensitivity checks

4. Method and limit check

Evidence source	Can support now	Needs more before	Limit to write down
Attribution report	Tracking, path, and timing diagnosis.	Budget lift or channel incrementality.	Pre-existing demand and unobserved touches are not resolved.
Campaign readout	Delivery fit, response quality, renewal with caveats, or next-test planning.	Broad causal impact language.	Observed response depends on reporting grain and comparison quality.
Brand study	Surveyed awareness, recall, favorability, or consideration movement.	Sales, profit, or pipeline claims.	Sample source, balance, wording, and outcome relevance govern the decision.
Attention metric	Exposure-quality and creative diagnostics.	Business impact or universal value scoring.	Attention is not the same as incremental outcome change.
Lift or geo test	Bounded causal readout inside the assigned population, market, outcome, and window.	Generalizing to every future audience, season, or spend level.	Leakage, balance, compliance, and uncertainty still matter.
MMM	Planning ranges and scenario discussion when controls, priors, calibration, and uncertainty are visible.	Treating modeled contribution as settled causal truth.	Calibration and sensitivity determine how much budget language the model earns.

5. Threshold and uncertainty

Business threshold for acting

Uncertainty range or confidence statement

Decision if the true effect is near the low end

Decision if the true effect is near the high end

6. Meeting closeout

Final action

Exact language allowed in the readout

Next uncertainty to measure

Evidence request before the next budget change

Downgrade rules

If the meeting finds	Downgrade to	Better next action
The recommendation depends on attributed conversions without a comparison group.	Observed response evidence.	Renew cautiously, repair tracking, or plan a holdout.
The strongest result is a small slice without minimum delivery or quality thresholds.	Directional comparison or weaker.	Retest with minimum cells and fixed slice rules.
A model rank changes materially when priors, exclusions, or calibration anchors change.	Directional planning evidence.	Use ranges, name assumptions, and require sensitivity review.
A survey result lacks sample source, balance, question wording, or uncertainty.	Weak survey evidence.	Request method detail before budget language relies on the result.
Outcome rows are still immature or missing buyer-side status.	Preliminary observed response.	Close the status window before final renewal language.

Advertising budget decision meeting worksheet