Paid Marketing
Paid demand-generation spend for the period — search, social, performance marketing, and sponsorships. The variable media component of go-to-market. — Finance KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).
I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier)
No public third-party standard anchors this KPI yet, so I'mBoard authors and maintains the definition — transparently labeled as editorial tier. See the ontology methodology for the published vs editorial tier system and the back-attribution workstream.
Rogue ID: finance.paid_marketing
Type: Currency
Domain: Finance
Definition
Paid demand-generation spend for the period — search, social, performance marketing, and sponsorships. The variable media component of go-to-market.
Formula
Paid media / performance-marketing spend for the period.Why it matters
A directly-tunable growth lever; the core input to paid CAC.
How to interpret
Judge against pipeline/bookings generated, not in isolation.
Calculation policy
How an AI agent should compute this KPI from messy company data. Free-text rules consumed at reasoning time — not a deterministic DSL. The most common ways to get this wrong are listed under Common miscomputations.
Inclusion rules
- Paid demand-generation media for the period — search, social, performance marketing, and paid sponsorships.
Exclusion rules
- Marketing staff compensation (finance.marketing_payroll) and marketing tooling (finance.sm_tools_software).
- Events and conferences (finance.events_conferences) and organic/content production labor.
Required inputs
- Ad-platform spend and sponsorship invoices.
Validation checks
- Judge against the pipeline/bookings generated (paid CAC), not in isolation; rolls into finance.total_sm.
Common miscomputations
- Bundling agency management fees or tooling into media spend.
- Reading media spend without the pipeline it produced.
Related KPIs
finance.total_smfinance.marketing_payroll
Source
I'mBoard editorial — authored and maintained by I'mBoard, first published 2026-04-01. No third-party standard is cited for this KPI; when one emerges, the definition is back-attributed and promoted to the published tier (a minor version bump). Read the ontology methodology for the published vs editorial tier system, attribution rules, and dispute process.
Stage relevance
| Company stage | Priority |
|---|---|
| Series A | Recommended |
| Series B | Recommended |
| Series C+ | Recommended |
| Public | Recommended |
Suggested for stages: Series A, Series B, Series C+, Public.
Default owning functions
- Finance
Machine-readable
- This KPI as JSON:
/api/ontology/finance/paid_marketing.json - All Finance KPIs:
/api/ontology/finance.json - Full catalog:
/api/ontology/index.json
Other S&M
Sales & marketing operating costs not captured by the named S&M lines for the period — a catch-all kept small by design. — Finance KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).
Payment / Transaction Costs
Direct payment-processing and transaction fees attributable to delivering revenue (card processing, gateway fees, marketplace take rates). A cost-of-revenue line where relevant; omitted or near-zero for invoice-only businesses. — Finance KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).