ITV hopes to ‘recession proof’ businesses with new Recovery Budget Planner tool

ITV has introduced an interactive web-based tool to help advertisers recession-proof their business.

The free Recovery Budget Planner, commissioned by ITV AdLabs, was built using independent data from economics consultancy, Magic Numbers, and will allow advertisers to trial different budget scenarios and review the expected impacts.

Dr Grace Kite, Founder and Managing Director of Magic Numbers, said: “This tool exists to help you decide how your specific business should respond to the changing outside world. “It uses numbers that you probably already have to hand and is easy to navigate. We’ve made the back end sophisticated so that you don’t have to be. Everything our clever geeks know about how to win in 2023 is built in.”

By inputting current spend on media, competitor spend on media, market share and an optional profit margin, the tool can express the likely outcomes of different advertising budget scenarios in terms of market share, sales and profit.

Once these variables have been submitted, the user can use Magic Numbers’ projections to select a recession forecast for their brand’s sector. The Recovery Budget Planner then works out how market share will likely change by 2025, additional costs of recovering lost market share if budgets were cut and the expected number of years to return to pre-recession market share.

Ideally, the tool will serve as a new way to aid marketers in presenting a convincing case to Financial Directors on how advertising can help a brand return to growth following the economic downturn.

Kate Waters, ITV Director of Client Strategy and Planning, said: “We’re doing everything we can to help advertisers throughout the economic downturn and we wanted to empower marketing professionals with both research and data to be able to make a case for continued investment in advertising during a tough period.

“Many marketers struggle to make a simple case for investment using existing academic-style studies so the Recovery Budget Planner makes the theory actionable and easy to apply to a brand's specific situation.”

ITV is currently inviting clients to be beta testers of the new tool ahead of its full launch and you can try it out here.