AEO ROI calculator.

What this calculator actually measures

The AEO ROI calculator produces three numbers and a grade from four inputs. The calculation is deliberately simple — simple enough that a CFO can audit it on the back of a napkin, but structured the way CFOs actually evaluate marketing ROI. Pipeline isn't the return line. Gross profit on that pipeline is.

The math: total monthly AEO spend equals tool cost plus content cost. Monthly gross profit on AEO pipeline equals pipeline dollars times gross margin. CAC payback in months is total AEO spend divided by monthly gross profit — the number of months of AEO-sourced gross profit it takes to cover one month of AEO spend. ROI multiplier is monthly gross profit divided by monthly AEO spend. Defensibility grade is rule-based on payback.

None of this is new. It's the same CAC payback framework every B2B SaaS operator runs on paid acquisition, applied to the AEO line item. The reason AEO programs tend to fail renewal reviews is not that the economics are bad — it is that the team never structured the numbers this way. The calculator produces the structure.

Reading the defensibility grade

Green (payback under 3 months). The AEO program is paying for itself in the same quarter it runs. This is the shape of a strong B2B SaaS AEO program — commercial-intent content, narrow prompt set, CRM-attributed pipeline. Renewal at Green is defensible with a one-page memo. Expansion conversation is on the table.

Yellow (payback 3–6 months). The program is working but thin. Something is undersized — either the tool cost is high relative to pipeline, the content spend is flat, or the pipeline attribution is missing some of the opportunities the AEO program actually influenced. Yellow is a signal to tighten, not to cut.

Red (payback 6+ months). The program is not defensible in its current shape. The CFO is right to push. Either pipeline attribution is incomplete (undercounting real AEO influence), or the spend-to-output ratio is upside down. Red is where teams either fix the attribution tracking or cut the line item.

Why most teams grade Yellow or Red the first time

The first time a B2B SaaS team runs this calculator honestly, they usually land in Yellow or Red — not because the AEO program is bad, but because the pipeline number is undercounted. If your only source of AEO-influenced pipeline is UTM-tagged traffic, you are missing the opportunities where AI was the first touch but the prospect came back direct, or where AEO surfaced in the middle of a multi-touch journey that closed on a different channel.

This is the specific problem Lantern's V1 product is built to solve — attributing citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini to HubSpot opportunities across the full deal lifecycle, not just last-touch. When the pipeline input is complete, the grade usually moves from Red to Yellow or Yellow to Green without any spend changes. The program didn't get better. The measurement did.

For the full framework on how to present this to a CFO, see the CFO's Guide to AEO Budget Defense. For an honest head-to-head of the tools that produce this pipeline number, see our comparison pages.

Inputs, in more detail

Monthly AEO tool cost. The subscription line for your AEO monitoring or attribution tool. Lantern is $99/mo or Enterprise. Otterly runs $29–$549/mo. Profound typically lands at $3–8K/mo for B2B SaaS. Use the sticker price of whatever you're running today.

Monthly AEO content production cost. The fully-loaded cost of producing AEO-targeted content — writers, editors, SME review time, brief production. For most B2B SaaS teams this is the biggest AEO line item and is usually 5–30x the tool cost. Do not underestimate it; the CFO already knows what the writers cost.

AEO-influenced pipeline. The opportunities in your CRM that touched an AI-sourced channel. Be honest and conservative. If you don't track this cleanly today, start with direct-traffic opportunities on AEO-targeted landing pages as a lower bound. The more precise this number gets, the more the grade moves toward Green.

Gross margin. Your company-level gross margin. B2B SaaS typically runs 70–85%. If you don't know yours, 75% is fine as a working estimate — the grade bands are wide enough that margin errors of a few percent don't flip the result.

Common mistakes when running this

• Using pipeline as the return line. Pipeline is a revenue line. Gross profit is the return line. Always multiply through gross margin.
• Forgetting content spend. If you only enter the tool cost, the ROI looks 5–20x better than reality. Include the content budget.
• Overstating AEO-sourced pipeline. If an opportunity closed off a paid ad but the first touch was ChatGPT, count it as AEO-influenced. If the paid ad was the first touch and AEO didn't surface, don't.
• Running one month and trusting the result. Pipeline is lumpy. Run this across 3–6 months and average before making renewal decisions.

From this calculator to a live monthly output

The calculator is a snapshot. Lantern ships the same math live every month — pulling pipeline directly from HubSpot, filtering for AI-sourced touches, computing the grade, and delivering the CFO-formatted PDF on a schedule. That is the V1 product. $99/mo or Enterprise.

If you are running this calculator to decide whether AEO attribution is worth paying for, the answer is in the math itself. When the grade is Red and you're guessing at pipeline, a $99/mo subscription that makes the pipeline number honest is cheap. When the grade is Green, the same $99/mo locks in the renewal defense every month without manual work.