Introduction

The Marin Search platform has historically supported margin, ROI, and ROAS targets as part of margin-based bidding. 

Due to the way these values are calculated, you actually only need to know one of them – ROAS – to calculate the others. With this in mind, we are planning to deprecate margin and ROI targets and instead support only ROAS targets in MarinOne. This change will take place before October 6th 2020. 

This simplifies your workflow by requiring management of just one field rather than three – while still providing the same level of insight into your bidding setup. 

Why this change is happening

As we mentioned, we actually only need to know just one of these metrics – ROAS – to calculate the others. By automating in this way, we can save you time on your everyday workflows in MarinOne.

For reference, here's how these calculations work:
 

1. Margin = (Revenue - Cost) / Revenue. (Expressed as a percentage.)
2. ROI = (Revenue - Cost) / Cost (Expressed as a percentage.)
3. ROAS = Revenue / Cost. (Expressed as a factor.)

...therefore ROAS = 1/(1-Margin).

What's going to change?

To support the upgrade to MarinOne, we will set all Strategies for all customers to target ROAS. You don't need to do anything, as this change will happen automatically. 

In terms of your in-app experience, the only thing that will change is that you'll only be able to set a ROAS target going forward in MarinOne – in effect saving you time by updating just one field rather than three. 

Frequently Asked Questions

Below we'll address some common questions about this change:
 

• What if I already have margin or ROI targets set in Marin Search? Any existing settings for margin or ROI in Marin Search will be automatically "translated" into ROAS targets in MarinOne. 
   
• What happens if I change margin or ROI in Marin Search? How will this be reflected in MarinOne? Because the three targeting modes are inter-operable, any changes you make to margin or ROI targets in Marin Search will be interpreted as a ROAS targets in MarinOne.