MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio)
Definition: MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio) is the shop’s revenue in a period divided by total ad spend in the same period. It does not credit purchases to particular ads, so it does not depend on platforms’ attribution windows. It shows how much shop revenue there is per unit spent on advertising overall.
MER answers “does the whole shop earn more than I spend on ads”, not “which ad sold”.
Also called: MER, marketing efficiency ratio, blended ROAS
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Why it matters for a shop
Platform figures (Meta’s or Google’s ROAS) depend on their attribution windows and can be inflated by overlap. MER takes two numbers you know independently of platforms: shop revenue and spend. That makes it a sound check on whether the shop as a whole earns on ads, though it will not show what to fix.
How Basketly handles it
- Reports → Overview: MER (total) next to revenue, orders and total spend, with a day-by-day line and the change against the previous period of the same length.
- Reports → Ad channels: each channel’s MER and a week-by-week MER chart.
- When the previous period is not covered by data, the verdict shows amounts without a change instead of pretending to compare.
Sources
What MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio) does not do
- MER does not say which ad, campaign or channel earned. Campaign and creative data serve that, with their own limits.
- It ignores costs outside ads unless you enter them by hand as extra costs.
ROAS is the value of purchases credited to an ad divided by its spend, by the platform’s window. MER divides all shop revenue by all spend and credits nothing.
It depends on the shop and on costs not visible here. Compare your own MER over time, not with other shops’ numbers.
No. Higher spend without higher revenue lowers MER; the panel shows the change of both numbers together.
See also
- ROAS (return on ad spend)The value of purchases credited to an ad divided by what was spent on that ad.Read
- Cost per purchaseAd spend divided by the number of purchases a platform reported.Read
- Attribution windowThe time after an ad click or view in which a platform may credit a purchase to that ad.Read
- Sales reportOne sentence on how the shop is doing, the six key figures and conclusions with a next step — and tabs below, each answering one question. Every number with its truth level: the shop, a platform or the last click.Read
- ROAS, MER and cost per purchase in Meta ads: what each number measures and which to trustHow Meta's ROAS differs from MER based on shop revenue, how cost per purchase is counted, and how to read them in Campaigns and Creatives without double counting.Read
- A weekly shop sales report every Monday: revenue, spend of every channel, MER and ROAS without mixing sourcesHow to read Reports and the Monday e-mail: shop revenue, spend of every channel, blended MER, ROAS as each platform reports it and best-selling products.Read
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