Benchmarks Are Back (And Better Than Ever!)

We’re pumped to announce that industry benchmarks are back in Triple Whale!

Yep, that’s right. You can now (right now!) see how your metrics measure up to your direct competitors. But before you dive in, let’s talk about the data. We’re peeling back the curtain on how we collect and aggregate benchmark data, the inclusion criteria, and the rigorous standards our data team has in place to ensure it’s all squeaky clean.

First, where does this data come from?

Our benchmarking data is collected by Triple Whale with consent from our customer base. We store and use data from the following sources:

• Shopify
• Facebook (Meta) Advertising
• Google Advertising
• Post-Purchase Surveys (industry information)
• Triple Whale formulated data

Triple Whale formulated data would include blended metrics like Return on Ad Spend. That includes ad spend data that customers may have provided us individually, rather than just spend data collected from the Facebook and Google API’s, providing your store with a more accurate benchmark.

How is the data anonymized?

To answer your burning question; YES, your store’s data and privacy is protected. 

No other store or competitor can tie back benchmark data to your store alone. We use a mix of anomaly detection and machine learning techniques to ensure that no single shop can skews the data set.

Is the data clean?

Again, yes! Our team took rigorous steps (read: all nighters and manual checks) to ensure that all anomalistic data points were accounted for or removed from the data set.

For example, Facebook spend and ROAS can be up to three standard deviations from the mean during popular sale periods such as Cyber Monday. Now, as all ecom marketers know, this is to be expected, and we decided to keep those special holiday datasets. However, some stores place large test orders on their site, or process wholesale orders through the same Shopify backend as their ecommerce orders. This can cause massive fluctuations in metrics such as MER, ROAS and New Customer CPA; so we cleaned all that up for you.

Because of the proactive steps we’ve taken, a new store can plug directly into Triple Whale and become eligible to review benchmark data by providing the store industry.

Let’s break it down. What are the filter criteria? 

The criteria we chose allows you to filter our entire data set by the Industry, AOV range, and monthly ad spend range. We recommend using the filters closest to your own data points for an accurate read on your performance.

First, customers have the ability to filter by the industry of their choice. If a specific industry does not have at least 5 stores, you will be shown benchmarks that make up an “Other” category.

We’ve defined “Other” as all shops that belong to industries without enough stores to be statistically significant on their own.

Available Industries:

1. Art
2. Baby
3. Books
4. Car & Truck Parts
5. Cell Phones & Accessories
6. Clothing
7. Collectibles
8. Computers
9. Crafts
10. Digital Products
11. Electronics
12. Fashion Accessories
13. Food & Beverages
14. Health & Beauty
15. Home & Garden
16. Jewelry & Watches
17. Office Products
18. Pet Supplies
19. Shoes
20. Sporting Goods
21. Toys & Hobbies

Note: The following two filter segments are made up of a rolling 90-day average. This helps to ensure outliers don’t drastically skew the outcome of the metrics being displayed.

AOV (Average Order Value)

1. <$50
2. $51 - $100
3. $100

Monthly Spend

1. <$50k
2. $50k

Available Benchmarked Metrics 

We know that these calculations can be executed a little differently depending on your business. So here’s how we do the math for the available benchmarked metrics today: 

1. Blended ROAS = Total Sales / Blended Ad Spend

1. NC-ROAS (new customer return on ad spend) = New Customer Sales Revenue / Blended Ad Spend
2. NCPA (New Customer Cost per Acquisition) = Blended Ad Spend / Count of New Customers
3. Facebook CPM $ (Cost per thousand impressions) = Total Amount Spent / Total Impressions x 1000
4. Facebook CTR % (Click Thru Rate) = (Total link clicks / Total impressions) x 100
5. Facebook CPC $(Cost per Link Click) = Facebook Ad Spend / Total link clicks
6. Google ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) = Google Reported Conversion Value / Google Ad Spend
7. Google CPC (cost per link click) = Google Ad Spend / Google reported Outbound Link Clicks
8. Google CPM (cost per thousand impressions) = Total Amount Spent / Total Impressions x 1000
9. Google CTR (click through rate) = Google reported Outbound Link Clicks / Total Impressions

Go forth and conquer your industry! You got this.

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