A Case Study Beyond ROAS: Achieving High MER for Our Clients
- Jade Javier
- Apr 29
- 4 min read
Ever heard of MER? It's okay; most marketers don’t know what MER is. MER stands for Media Efficiency Ratio. It's similar to ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), providing a measuring stick for your overall marketing efforts. The calculation is similar to ROAS: divide your total earnings by marketing spend. Not by campaign or platform but the entire marketing spend.
ROAS is specific to the platform, such as Meta or Google Ads, and the conversion value earned by the campaign, ad set, or ad. MER is the macro, by looking at your earned conversion value or revenue divided by your total ad spend. Spending helps the brand, not just sales but overall growth.
submit lead forms: Page visitors enter the funnel and join the email database; however, based on the click attribution (usually seven days), conversions will not be credited back to paid. Instead, after attribution has expired, sales will be credited to email marketing should they click on a clearance sale or conversion offer.
organic & subscription follows: Users see a paid ad but follow your page. Although paid ad engagement encouraged users to follow the social handle, any purchases are credited to organic after conversion attribution has expired.
retargeting funnel: In this case, a user engages with an ad via watching YouTube pre-roll, Meta Thru-play, or clicks and becomes part of the retargeting funnel. Attribution credit goes back and forth between platforms as users re-enter the funnel based on the most recent platform they engaged with. Because they are part of the funnel, they keep viewing and engaging with the paid ads.
ROAS has been changing due to various signal updates. iOS 14.5 has left its mark on Meta with diminishing returns. The above chart shows an immediate 30% decline in ROAS once the 14.5 update was available. Meta’s response to this was Conversion API (CAPI) which has successfully slowed attribution fatigue. CAPI is recommended for all businesses, but many fail to prioritize it within their paid social approach.
Finally, Apple is making more attribution waves with iOS 17. This removes ad-tracking parameters from links within Safari. Unfortunately, this includes the Google Click ID (GCLID) in hyperlinks from click ads. The specific iOS 17 update is called Link Tracking Protection. There are reports this has happened since iOS 14.5, but iOS 17 will be the official opt-out from the Safari browser. In addition, Apple is developing its own DSP (demand side platform), creating a walled garden where PPC buyers must pay to play to show ads (Source: Digiday). This is Apple’s first chess move in creating their self-serve platform, similar to paid search and social or programmatic.
It's clear the signals for success are evolving. ROAS is still important, but it's not necessarily your North Star. In this case, your MER should be the true measure of success. ROAS is still a compelling signal, but conversions will be under-reported. Since last year, YRV Dynamics has included MER in its overall strategy with clients.
YRV Dynamics was selected as the media buying and planning agency of record for a fashion DTC platform targeted to females aged 25–45. The previous agency campaigns were underperforming, and the client wanted a fresh perspective.
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The first update was updating Google Analytics to G4 vs UA. This was an easy process, using“GA Set Up Assistant.” This is an easy-to-follow, step-by-step process. Please review here for reference Google set-up assistant link.
YRV Dynamics then began constructing the Smart Funnel with mid-level and bottom-level engagement. Since the client has been active in the fashion industry for 10+ years, we wanted to analyze how these experiments performed before we leveraged reach and awareness campaigns.
We started with a smaller spend by week and adjusted ROAS accordingly based on comparison to our benchmarks. Since this is the fourth fashion client YRV Dynamics has won, we incorporated our proprietary vertical benchmarks to predict success.
Use Women's Interests: dresses, name brands, etc., to attract a large ACQ audience. This later evolved to first party/CRM Purchase LAL (look-a-likes).
The below test was our first outing for the month of July.
Middle funnel (MoFu) results:
While the Cost per Landing page view was higher than expected, it earned a $0.43 Cost per link click with a 2.5% CTR. This also led to 4 initiated checkouts.
Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) results:
This was solely conversion retargeting as we included CRM emails, users who engaged with our handle and previously paid assets, and LPVs. (landing page visitors). This yielded close to a 7 ROAS investment.
Results:
ROAS more than double the average 3 ROAS for overall e-commerce. MER also has a 3-return benchmark as well. Our current MER for this month's test was 17+.
Our initial spending level contributed 40% of all sales for our test month per ROAS. However, MER indicates the impact was much larger. In this case, users disconnected via iOS 17 or switched from mobile phones to home/work Wi-Fi. These disconnects and reconnects disengages the GCLID (iOS17) or Meta ads that do not have CAPI installed (iOS 14.5). Thus, any purchases are not contributed to paid ads. This is why “direct” traffic is the highest contributing GA bucket for e-commerce clients; it's unclassified visitors.
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