DTC Paid Media

The Fluency
Benchmark
Report

Real 2026 numbers from 10 fully managed fashion and beauty brands, $13.6M in Meta and Google spend against $110M in Shopify net revenue. Aggregated, anonymized, unaltered.

$13.6M
Ad spend
$110M
Shopify net
8.1x
Blended MER
352K
New customers
$38.61
Portfolio CaC
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10 brands·Meta + Google·2026·887K orders·Real data, anonymized
What's inside

Benchmarks you can
actually act on

Brand-level tables, not rounded-off industry averages. Every figure pulled from accounts we manage day to day.

01

Shopify blended performance

Net revenue, orders, new customers, MER, CaC and AOV for all 10 brands, plus the blended total.

02

Google & Meta deep dives

ROAS, CPM, CPC, CTR and CVR by brand on both platforms. 9.88x Google vs 5.14x Meta at portfolio level.

03

Fashion vs. beauty funnels

Spend mix, CaC, AOV and true MER side by side, with the takeaways that shift budget between channels.

Real data, anonymized

Brand-level
Shopify results

MER range 2.1x–14.2x. Three of ten brands cleared 11x. The report shows every row.

Brand
Net revenue
Orders
New custs
MER
CaC
AOV
Fashion 01
$6.6M
28K
13K
3.29x
$156
$235
Beauty 01
$3.8M
38K
15K
5.68x
$44
$123
Fashion 02
$33.1M
154K
14K
14.15x
$162
$216
Beauty 02
$3.3M
33K
12K
5.09x
$53
$99
Fashion 03
$6.6M
31K
14K
3.66x
$125
$212
Beauty 03
$442K
6K
5K
2.08x
$44
$72
Fashion 04
$4.5M
12K
6K
3.82x
$200
$364
Beauty 04
$43.4M
531K
253K
12.02x
$14
$82
Fashion 05
$6.7M
48K
17K
11.22x
$35
$141
Beauty 05
$1.8M
6K
2K
3.10x
$230
$308
Blended total
$110M
887K
352K
8.10x
$38.61
$124
Fashion vs. beauty

Two verticals,
two very different
growth math

Fashion

MER 6.5x
$7.2M
Paid spend
$46.3M
Shopify net
59K
New custs
$149
CaC
$241
AOV
39/61
Google/Meta mix

$241 average order value. Premium positioning means fewer orders needed to hit the number.

Beauty

MER 11.2x
$4.7M
Paid spend
$52.7M
Shopify net
294K
New custs
$57
CaC
$130
AOV
28/72
Google/Meta mix

294K new customers at $57 CaC, and Google beat Meta 9.7x to 2.3x on bottom-funnel intent.

Why this exists

Channel ROAS
isn't the goal

Most benchmark reports hand you an industry average and call it insight. This one shows the account-level math behind a portfolio running at 8.1x blended MER.

01

MER beats ROAS

Total net revenue ÷ total spend. It crosses platform silos and measures real program health. Portfolio average: 8.1x.

02

New customers at scale

352,574 new customers in a single quarter at $38.61 average CaC: the acquisition engine, not a one-month spike.

03

Efficiency that holds

Top performers hit 19.90x on Google and 18.96x on Meta inside the same portfolio. The report shows what separated them.

Methodology & scope
Data sources

Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads and Shopify Analytics, Jan–Mar 2026, across 10 fully managed brands.

What's excluded

Pinterest and TikTok. Coverage was too limited for statistically reliable blended benchmarks.

How MER is calculated

Total Shopify net revenue ÷ total ad spend, crossing ROAS silos for true program health.

Brand anonymization

Labelled Beauty 01–05 and Fashion 01–05 to protect confidentiality. All data real and unaltered.

Platform attribution

ROAS is platform-reported. Shopify MER and CaC are blended for true impact regardless of attribution.

Questions on the data

Email hello@fluencyfirm.com and we'll walk you through the pulls.

Grow
with
Fluency

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$110M+
Shopify net rev
352K
New customers
8.1x
Blended MER
115+
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