Big news: The Media Buyer just broke 100,000 weekly subscribers.
I’ve been publishing this modest little data report for three years, and you all have carried it forward, and for that I am thankful.
I’ve heard from agencies, operators, and marketers who rely on this data. They use it for peace of mind, competitive intelligence, and even just a “sense of the weather,” so to speak. I’ve heard of some screenshotting it for their weekly reporting decks.
Over the years, this data has grown. We’ve added hundreds of new advertisers, new platforms, and new functionality.
Just in the last 12 months, this newsletter tracked:
$8.94 billion in ad spend across more than 930 advertisers
571 billion impressions across thousands of ad platforms and formats
$42.5 billion in attributed revenue
The sheer volume of this dataset is unreal. We’ve barely scratched the surface in this newsletter.
At the same time, the advertising market has shifted.
New platforms like Axon and Vibe.co have arrived on the scene. Algorithmic changes affect advertisers of all sizes. CACs keep rising.
We want this newsletter to be the definitive voice on marketing benchmarks.
Therefore we’re making two big changes:
One: we’re changing the way we calculate The Media Buyer Index.
The charts will look the same, but we’ve made some adjustments on the back end. More nuanced outlier controls, more inclusive spend tracking, and better schema design. This makes our Index even more statistically significant when measuring trends.
Because of these mathematical and statistical adjustments, starting from this issue forward, all data you see may not line up with historical numbers we published prior to today.
The data now includes an “All other platforms.” This measures all ad spend that isn’t flowing to the platforms in the chart, excluding Amazon. There are hundreds of ad platforms our customers are testing every day.
This helps contextualize budget splits in a way that’s more representative of the diverse, ever-changing media mixes we’re seeing across Northbeam users.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is now filtered for new customers only. If you know our team, you’ll know new customer acquisition done profitably is our north star. Filtering CAC for new customers gives a more nuanced picture of performance across the ad platforms.
Two: The Index will still publish in The Media Buyer on Thursdays, but we’ll now be sending other data benchmarking content on other days of the week.
You may have seen our issue yesterday, which is just that: an analysis of April year-over-year data.
The adjustments to our data have made it easy for me to pull complex time series data. So I’m leaning in, pulling analyses to answer all your questions, and publishing it all for free.
This is just the beginning. As our data visualization, reporting, and content evolve, we want to hear from you.
You can reply to these emails anytime, I get all replies. Or you can DM me on X, Linkedin, or follow Northbeam’s official pages here and here. This data gets shared to all the above.
Cheers,
-bryan
🛰️ The Northbeam Story, as told by our founders. Dan and Austin explain the past, present and future of Northbeam.
🧐 Why is it so hard to hire good marketers? Connor MacDonald, CMO of The Ridge, explains why marketing is a little broken right now.
🧠 Northbeam + Common Thread Collective: we’re bringing enterprise attribution to seven-figure advertisers. Let’s work together.
📺 YouTube is launching it’s own version of native shopping. Two clicks and you can buy directly from your TV.
🚨 JOB: VP of Growth / WaterBoy / Austin + Remote: sick blend of storytelling and growth marketing.
🚨 JOB: Senior Designer, Marketing Brand and Creative / Northbeam / remote: join me in making amazing content for social and this newsletter!
🚨 JOB: Head of Growth / Javvy Coffee / Remote: join the best marketers in the game, $5m budget, and freedom to make infinite scale happen.
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