Marketing Science

ROI Is Not Enough. You Need Time-to-ROI.

Two initiatives can show the same ROI and still deserve very different decisions. The missing variable is time-to-ROI: how fast the initial investment is recovered.

Cyril Noirot

March 18, 2026

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5 min read

Everyone talks about ROI. Dashboards are full of it. Business cases are built on it. Decisions are justified with it.

But in practice, we are missing a second variable that matters just as much: how fast does the money come back?

Because two initiatives with the same ROI can have very different business value once time is introduced.

- cash constraints - reinvestment opportunities - operational risk - market volatility

About the author

Cyril Noirot

Lead Data Scientist

Freelance data scientist. I design and ship decision systems — forecasting, pricing, marketing measurement, optimization.

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