What Does it Mean to Win on Black Friday in 2022?

This year, survival is a win, and any growth is a triumph. Let me explain …

The last three years in ecommerce have been a volatile rollercoaster of a ride. For many of you, it’s been a whiplash of tailwinds and headwinds that has been difficult to sort out. After two years of bullish market trends, we sit today in perhaps the most difficult period in the entire history of ecommerce.

To validate such a bold claim I wanted to share with you some data that sparked a Twitter storm over the weekend:

Triple Whale, a rapidly growing attribution platform, shared data from their set of over 6500 stores and how they’ve been performing quarter-to-date. You can read the whole thread here, but the TL;DR is this:

Needless to say — when this data was published, Twitter erupted with concern about the state of our industry. Ecommerce leaders responded in droves:

While I do believe that these attribution tools play a role in our industry’s struggles, there are much bigger factors at play. I broke a number of them down in depth here if you’re interested in reading further.

But that’s not the point of this post …

The point is to help give you context for your own business and what is worth celebrating.

It’s tempting to get lost in YoY comps, trying to match the growth rates of the previous few years.

But that is not the environment we’re in. If you’ve battled your way even close to what you accomplished pre-iOS issues, during COVID, and before a recession, you should be PROUD!

And I know for a fact that many of you have something to celebrate. After seeing Triple Whale’s data, I had Steve Rekuc, CTC’s lead data analyst, pull a comp of our dataset to see how our clients stacked up year-over year.

Here’s what we found:

• Facebook Spend: +2.82%
• Facebook CPM's: +3.14%
• Facebook Revenue:+15.72%
• Facebook ROAS: +12.54%
• MER: -0.51%
• Store Revenue: +4.68%
• Store AOV: +1.70%

Amazing — YoY growth without sacrificing efficiency!

We are pressing against macro trends with a force of will that is truly inspiring to watch.

I hope this data provides context to your leadership teams, employees, investors and boards. I hope it encourages you that you’re on the right path, and that you can make it through this incredibly difficult time.

Let’s get back to the black!