Digital Lexicon Hub

A blended metric that divides total revenue by total marketing spend across all channels for the same period.

MER answers whether total marketing investment is paying off without relying on platform attribution, which often double-counts conversions; it helps finance and marketing agree on overall budget levels.

A brand books $600,000 in revenue in a quarter and spends $150,000 on ads, agencies and tools. MER is $600,000 / $150,000 = 4.0, meaning $4 of revenue per $1 of marketing, compared with the 3.5 target set for the year.

MER cannot show which channel or campaign drives results, and it includes revenue that would have happened without marketing, such as repeat or brand demand. Results shift with how spend and revenue are defined.

MER is total revenue divided by total marketing spend for the same period. Spend usually covers all paid media and may include agency fees, tools and content production; revenue may be gross, net of returns or new-customer only, so the definition must be fixed before tracking trends. Unlike Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), it needs no attribution model. Teams pair it with Incrementality tests or Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM).