This week's data
Let the great creative testing gauntlet begin. Advertisers are running thousands of ad creative over the next 20ish days to find the winners that will carry their BFCM. Last week's CPMs have yet to reflect that increased volume, but anecdotally I know that push won't start till November 1.
CTRs and CPCs are trending upwards through the week, a good sign for creative testing to come. What's most interesting is the share percentages, though: Axon pulled a 10% increased share of wallet week over week, up from 8% increase last week.
Other not-Meta platforms are tracking increased spend as well, with increased spend on TikTok, Snap, Pinterest and even Bing. We know we can crank spend on Meta on BFCM - the real question is how much can we spend on the other platforms and get good scale?
I think these spend increases are indicative of increased testing on the side platforms as advertisers try to figure out where they're going to allocate spend this year. Are you testing out Axon, TikTok and Pinterest? You should be.
We have more than a hundred advertisers trying Axon right now. You should join them. See the bottom of this email for a code to access Axon and unlock $10k in ad credits, on us.
How to master Northbeam
I get asked all the time: how do the pros use Northbeam?
What metrics are they looking at? How is it that Grüns is scaling so quickly using it? (Congrats on hiring Derek, by the way - he’s a genius.) What metrics are people looking at in Northbeam?
Even more fundamentally: what does a daily Northbeam habit look like?
Northbeam is one of those tools that's simple to learn but takes time to master. (Full disclosure: I was a Northbeam customer and user before I joined the company.) It can be challenging to pick up a new tool. It’s even harder to trust one as the basis for all your decision-making.
To really get the most out of Northbeam, you need to do more than just focus on metrics and ad campaign optimization. You need to fundamentally change how you approach your daily flow.
I'm going to walk you through some quick best practices for media buyers using Northbeam.
But before we dive in, understand this: adopting Northbeam isn't just about turning on a new tool. It's about making a philosophical decision about how you want to run your ad accounts.
Northbeam works best when you run a business focused on profitable new customer acquisition. That looks different for every business, but the best practices I'm about to share are a 101-level introduction.
The philosophy
What you want to do is identify which ad campaigns are driving new customer acquisition profitably. So let’s build a process that highlights that for you.
Set up your dashboard
If you're logging into Northbeam every day, here's how you should set up your dashboard. This will be your baseline. Set this in the global filter at the top.
- Attribution Model: Clicks-Only or Clicks + Modeled Views
- Attribution Window: 1 Day
- Accounting Mode: Accrual Accounting
- Granularity: Daily
- Time Period: 7 Days
- Time Comparison: Previous period
Starting with this filter will give you the most conservative approach to your ads. No fluff - only highlighting channels, platforms, campaigns and ads that you KNOW are doing the work of converting customers.
The metrics that matter
There are hundreds of metrics in Northbeam. Until you’re super comfortable, here’s what you need to watch:
- Spend (obviously)
- New Customer % (this is unique to Northbeam and it's gold)
- ROAS (1-day window, for now)
- Auction and softer funnel metrics like CPMs, impressions, etc, (secondary, but helpful context)
This allows you to show Northbeam’s independent ROAS, New Customer % and Revenue numbers alongside your spend.
This is not platform data. This is data Northbeam’s created for you, and learning to trust it will liberate you from the confusion you feel looking only at platform or Shopify data.
That’s what the pros understand. Northbeam ROAS is NOT the same as the ROAS you’re seeing inside Meta, TikTok, etc.
When to make decisions
This is critical: don't make decisions too early.
Here's my rule of thumb: Wait until a campaign has spent 5-10x your Average Order Value (AOV) before you do anything drastic. Or for the real ones, wait till you know you’ve hit statistical significance.
Let's say your AOV is $80. That means you're waiting for $400-800 in spend before you start making calls. Once you hit that threshold, you'll know the Northbeam data is accurate enough to optimize against.
Scaling vs killing campaigns
Now that you’re in the dashboard and you have a handle on the data, it’s time to talk optimization. You’re probably in a two week cycle of running experiments, scaling spend on best performing creatives and cutting budget on underperformers.
Follow your normal scaling process, but base your decisions on Northbeam's directional insights, especially in the first 30 to 60 days.
Look at how your performance is pacing over a longer time period. Rely on those Northbeam-specific metrics like New Customer Acquisition Cost (nCAC) and New Customer %. They’ll tell you when something is working and when it isn’t.
That's how you know when to scale (add money) or when to bail (turn off a campaign). And beware: they will NOT line up with in-platform numbers. Don’t look at those. Trust Northbeam numbers for an experiment or two and see how it feels. You’ll discover Northbeam numbers are more accurate.
A few more parting tips
Use our Breakdown FAQ to label your campaigns properly. Good labeling gives your ads a naming taxonomy so you can aggregate based on specific parameters. It's boring work, but it pays off.
And remember: Northbeam's numbers will look different from what you're used to. Once you have a minimum of 90 days of Northbeam data, you can leverage your Profit Benchmarks to manage these differences and understand what good performance actually looks like for your business.
We have more guides like this one over on our readme. Happy scaling.
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