The Media Buyer Index #15

Welcome to The Media Buyer Newsletter, where we deep dive into the latest ecomm data (powered by Northbeam) to see what trends, anomalies, or interesting findings we can uncover. We keep it simple with three sections: The raw numbers, a quick summary, and our key takeaways.

In our 15th installment of The Media Buyer Newsletter, we’re thrilled about Advantage+, excited for a new Northbeam feature but generally sad about auction performance. Let’s dig in.

The Summary

Generally, arrows are red this week for media buyers. While Meta CTRs have spiked, and most industry verticals are seeing daily revenue increase, platform metrics are still trending downward though not nearly as badly as the previous week. Notable movements are the continued increase of Meta CPMs (+5.51%) and increased CACs on TikTok (+8.15%).

Jewelry made an astonishing recovery week over week, seeing both daily revenue and daily new customers increase by double digits.

The Takeaway

Previously-dramatic performance changes have started to plateau. Unsurprisingly, we’ve seen a correlation between UX/UI updates and performance hiccups, and Meta recently updated the UI on audiences. Now that the update is done, we’ve seen Meta’s CPCs, CvR and ROAS balance within a percentage point week over week. Hopefully things will come back to normal, but…

Meta CPMs continue to rise and have done so through all of April. We suspect marketers are consolidating their shrinking budgets to Facebook’s historically high-converting platform. And besides…

We’re hearing that Advantage+ Shopping  campaigns are outperforming everything right now. Huge drops in CPA, fantastic conversion rates, accessible CPMs: Maybe AI is taking over after all. Many marketers prefer having “control” over how their campaigns work, preferring not to trust “black boxes” like ASC and PMAX to ship ads. The fastest-growing DTC brand in history disagrees: trust the black box, but do your math right.

If you haven’t already started your “ASC” campaigns, here’s a great site with hundreds of DTC ad examples and links to their ad libraries.

If you’re launching a new Facebook ad campaign, this thread from Cody Plofker sums up where you need to start. Cody is the CMO of Jones Road Beauty and a Northbeam power user.

TikTok CACs continue to rise. They’ve been trending upwards for several weeks now, defiant in the face of a looming ban. Budget has mostly crept upwards as well. An 8% jump in CACs is enough to affect a wide range of ad accounts, but our sources aren’t consistent in what they’re seeing. There’s a trend where certain brands (who will not be linked here) are trying no-CTA ads to make their content look more organic… Which seems to miss the point, in our opinion.

What seems more likely is the constant influx of new users and new advertisers is driving up competition for eyeballs on the platform. I mean, even The Grateful Dead are on here now.  

In case you missed it, we launched a new feature this week!

Now you can schedule your Northbeam data exports as custom reports, either manually or scheduled automatically. Our data export tool sends you a copy of the latest insights as a customized report straight to your Documents page to save you time while automating your work. Read more about it here.

To export Northbeam data as a customized report:

1. Log in to your Northbeam dashboard
2. Navigate to and click on the Sales Tab on the left panel
3. Scroll down to the Breakdown Table
4. Click Export and select the metrics you want as a report
5. Click Schedule Export and follow the prompts
6. You can find all data exports on your Documents page under the hamburger menu on the top right corner of your dashboard

Early access is now open for MMM Plus, Northbeam’s Media Mix Modeling solution. “Media mix modeling” is a statistical analysis that shows you the optimal blend of budget across your advertising channels. Northbeam is bringing MMM into the future, powering it with machine learning and designing it bespoke for ecommerce. If you've wanted to try MMM at your brand, now’s your chance: sign up to learn more here.

As always, this issue of The Media Buyer was entirely written by a human.

Looking forward:

Join us at the virtual DTCx Media Buyer Summit in June! You’ll learn the newest tactics for media buying, meet with the smartest minds in the biz, and prepare yourself for the future of performance marketing. Plus we’ll be speaking, so come say hi.

Early access is now open for MMM Plus, Northbeam’s Media Mix Modeling solution. “Media mix modeling” is a statistical analysis that shows you the optimal blend of budget across your advertising channels. Northbeam is bringing MMM into the future, powering it with machine learning and designing it bespoke for ecommerce. If you've wanted to try MMM at your brand, now’s your chance: sign up to learn more here.

Join us next Monday at 10:30 AM PST / 1:30 PM EST for the weekly Media Buyer Webinar, where we’ll discuss these trends in greater detail. Come with your questions and takeaways! We’ll see you there.

Happy media buying!

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