The “One Channel Away From Zero” Risk Score
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Few businesses fail because of one bad quarter. They fail because a single channel (an ad account, a marketplace listing, one referral partner) got expensive, got suspended, or got throttled overnight. This scores how exposed you are and shows what your P&L looks like the morning after your largest channel goes to zero.
| Channel | Control | Monthly revenue | Monthly spend | Gross margin % | Recovery % |
|---|
Revenue by channel
Ad spend by channel
Revenue by control type
| If this channel goes to zero | Revenue lost | Recovered | Contribution before | Contribution after | Monthly profit after | Swing | Runway | Survivable? |
|---|
Build the second channel before you need it
The kill test names your exposure. A free 30-minute consultation covers which channel to add next, what it costs to stand up, and how quickly it can carry real volume.
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How the score works. Four weighted components add up to 100 points: revenue concentration measured with the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (30 points), dependence on your single largest channel (25 points), share of revenue running through platforms you do not control (20 points), and whether your P&L survives the loss of your largest channel (25 points). The kill test assumes the lost channel's spend stops immediately and that your stated recovery share is re-won through the remaining channels at their blended margin and spend efficiency. This is a planning model, not a forecast. Every calculation runs in your browser, and nothing you enter is uploaded.
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Who this is for
This is for owners and operators of small and mid-sized businesses where one source of demand has become the business. It applies with particular force to ecommerce and DTC brands, whose concentration risk tends to be both extreme and invisible. A brand doing 55% of revenue through one ad platform feels diversified, because the spreadsheet lists five channels, until the account gets flagged on a Friday afternoon.
It also helps anyone preparing for a raise, a sale, or a lending conversation. Concentration is one of the first things a serious buyer or underwriter tests for, and arriving with the number already calculated and a plan attached to it puts you in a stronger position.
Why concentration is the risk nobody prices
Marketing concentration works like leverage. It amplifies returns on the way up, which is why it accumulates: the channel that works gets more budget, the budget makes it work harder, and inside eighteen months a business that started with four channels has one channel and three rounding errors. Nobody decides this. It happens through a hundred individually correct budget allocations.
The exposure is ordinary rather than exotic. Ad accounts get disabled for policy violations the owner never sees. Platform algorithm changes reset performance overnight. CPMs run 30% to 40% higher in Q4 and do not fully return. Marketplaces change commission structures, launch competing private label, or suppress a listing over a review dispute. Referral partners get acquired. Any one of these removes a channel's economics without warning and without appeal.
Concentration goes unmanaged because it appears in no standard report. Your P&L has no line for it. Your dashboard does not flag it. It becomes visible at the moment it becomes a crisis, which is the worst possible time to start building an alternative. A new channel takes 60 to 120 days to become predictable, and you would be funding that runway from a business that just lost half its revenue.
Owned, rented, earned. The distinction most operators skip is who controls the relationship. Owned means you hold the customer's contact details and can reach them tomorrow at close to no cost: email, SMS, direct traffic, and real retail relationships. Rented means a platform sets your reach and your price and can close your account: Meta, Google, TikTok, and Amazon. Earned is neither paid nor owned: organic search, PR, and word of mouth. Two businesses with identical revenue and identical channel counts can have very different survival odds depending on this mix.
Find out how exposed your revenue really is
Concentration appears in no standard report, which is why it goes unmanaged until it becomes a crisis. Spend 30 minutes with a Hawke Media expert and get an honest read on your channel mix.
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What the score measures
The tool produces a score from 0 to 100 using four weighted components. Revenue concentration, worth 30 points, uses the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, the same measure competition regulators use to assess market concentration, and converts it into an effective channel count. You may list five channels, but if one of them is 60% of revenue you effectively have about 2.3. Largest-channel dependency, worth 25 points, captures your single biggest exposure directly. Rented-platform exposure, worth 20 points, measures the share of revenue running through infrastructure you do not control. Survivability, worth 25 points, matters most. It runs a kill test on every channel: it removes the channel, adds back the share of revenue you believe you would recover elsewhere, and reports what your monthly profit and cash runway look like the morning after.
That last output is the point of the exercise. A score starts a conversation. A line reading "losing Meta puts you at negative $31,674 a month with 7.6 months of runway" produces a decision.
What to do with the answer
If the kill test comes back unsurvivable, write the contingency plan now: which fixed costs you cut in week one, which you cut in week four, and what the smallest workable version of the business looks like. Those answers are much harder to reach under pressure.
Then work on the recovery percentage rather than the channel count. Recovery depends on owned audience. A brand with 40,000 engaged email subscribers can re-win a meaningful share of lost demand in weeks, while a brand with none starts from zero on a new platform. Report owned-channel revenue as its own line item and set a ceiling on your largest channel's share, reached by growing the other channels faster rather than by shrinking the leader. Finally, hold 5% to 10% of spend as a permanent channel testing line, because the time to build the second channel is while the first one still pays for it.
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Frequently asked questions
What counts as a channel for this score?
Any distinct source of demand that could stop independently of the others. Meta and Google are separate channels, because a Meta suspension does not touch Google. Facebook and Instagram ads bought through one ad account are a single channel, because one account action stops both. Amazon is its own channel. Email and SMS can be combined when they share a list and a provider. The test is simple: if one failure would take both down, they are one channel.
What is a good risk score?
Below 20, which is grade A, means no single channel can take you down. From 20 to 35, grade B, you carry real concentration with enough cushion to survive a shutdown. From 35 to 50, grade C, one channel carries a disproportionate share and you should be building the next one this quarter. From 50 to 70, grade D, you are running a single-channel business. Above 70, grade F, you have a single point of failure, and the only open question is timing. Most growing ecommerce brands land between 40 and 65 and are surprised by it.
How do I estimate my recovery percentage?
Recovery is the share of a lost channel's revenue you could realistically win back elsewhere within 90 days. Be pessimistic. A useful anchor is the percentage of that channel's customers already on your email or SMS list who have bought before. For pure cold-acquisition channels, 15% to 25% is a realistic ceiling. For channels serving customers you already own, 50% to 60% is defensible. With no data at all, use 20%. Operators consistently overestimate this figure, and that specific error is what turns a survivable event into a fatal one.
Is concentration fine if the concentrated channel is profitable?
Profitability and fragility are separate questions. A channel can be highly profitable right up to the moment it stops existing, and its profitability is usually what caused the concentration. The useful framing is not whether to spend less on the channel that works. It is what insuring against the loss costs, and whether that cost is lower than the loss. Typically the insurance is a few points of margin reinvested into a second channel and an owned audience, which is far cheaper than rebuilding demand under duress.
How often should I re-run this?
Quarterly, and after any significant budget shift. Concentration rebuilds itself: every time one channel starts outperforming, allocation follows it, and the score climbs without anyone deciding to take on more risk. Treating a rising score as an early warning rather than a scoreboard is the whole discipline. Many operators keep it as a standing item in the monthly numbers review alongside cash and contribution margin.
Is my data sent anywhere?
No. Every calculation runs locally in your browser using JavaScript embedded in the page. Nothing you enter is transmitted to a server, saved to a database, or logged. Closing the tab clears it. To keep a record, use the CSV download or print to PDF; both are produced on your own device.