You are a Financial Analyst on Google’s Ads Finance team supporting a planned pricing and budget allocation change for Google Ads. Leadership wants to launch a revised incentive structure for a group of large advertisers before quarter-end, but several non-finance stakeholders do not understand the difference between revenue growth, gross margin, and contribution margin. If the concept is not explained clearly, Sales may push deals that look strong on top-line revenue but reduce profitability.
The project team includes 1 Finance lead (you), 1 Ads Product Manager, 2 Sales leads, 1 GTM operations manager, and 2 analysts who maintain reporting in Looker and BigQuery. You have 4 weeks to align stakeholders and produce a launch recommendation for the VP of Ads Finance.
Sales wants a simple message that helps account teams close Q-end commitments quickly. The Ads Product Manager wants the launch to stay on schedule. The VP of Ads Finance wants a financially sound recommendation with clear downside scenarios. Legal and Deal Desk require any pricing guidance to be documented and consistent.
You have a $75K external research and enablement budget, no additional headcount, and only 20% engineering support from the reporting team. The decision deadline is in 28 days. The recommendation must cover 3 advertiser segments, 2 launch options, and a downside case assuming a 5% increase in incentive spend.