One number for two different businesses
Supply acquisition and demand acquisition have different costs, different payback and different urgency. Reporting them as one funnel hides which side is actually the constraint.
What's different here
Marketplace measurement usually inherits an e-commerce template, which assumes one customer type and one conversion. That framing cannot answer the only question that matters here: which side is short, and where. A blended cost per acquisition across supply and demand is an average of two unrelated economics, and it is why so many marketplaces spend into a shortage they cannot see in the dashboard.
Marketplaces & Platforms clients
What analytics & measurement looks like for marketplaces.
These are the plays that wouldn't appear on a generic analytics & measurement page — they only make sense in marketplaces & platforms.
Separate the two funnels completely, from first touch
Different conversion events, different cost targets, different reporting. Supply-side health is time-to-first-earning and provider churn in month one; demand-side health is repeat rate. Blending them produces a number that describes neither and moves budget in the wrong direction.
Report fill rate by market, not signups
A supply campaign adding providers to an already-saturated city has spent money for nothing while the dashboard shows growth. Tying campaign reporting to local fill or match rate is what makes the media plan respond to where the shortage actually is.
Measure the failed search
The most valuable event in a marketplace is usually the one nobody instruments: someone searched and found nothing. That is a demand signal, a supply gap and a churn predictor simultaneously, and most implementations record only successful transactions.
Attribute across the delay between sides
A provider acquired in March generates transactions from June onward. Judging supply campaigns on same-period revenue makes every one of them look like a failure, which is why supply marketing keeps losing budget to demand campaigns that report faster.
What holds marketplaces back
The cold-start problem
Buyers leave because supply is thin; suppliers leave because there's no demand. Both sides churn and neither reaches critical mass.
You're spread across too many categories
Marketing eleven categories at once means none reaches liquidity. Concentration feels risky and is almost always the right call.
You're measuring GMV, not match rate
GMV can grow while the core experience gets worse. Match rate and time-to-first-match are the health metrics that actually predict retention.
Supply-side churn is invisible
Suppliers who receive no requests quietly stop responding. By the time it shows in your numbers, the damage is done.
The full scope.
Everything in a analytics & measurement engagement, applied to marketplaces & platforms.
Measurement audit and event map
Every event, where it fires, what it means and whether it correlates with revenue. Most accounts are optimising toward an event chosen because it was easy to implement rather than because it predicts money.
Server-side collection with deduplication
Events sent from your own infrastructure with a shared identifier so browser and server transmission cannot double-count. Running both without that identifier inflates conversions by a large margin, and teams celebrate it.
Consent-aware implementation
Collection that respects consent state by design rather than by a banner bolted on afterwards. This is a legal requirement in several markets and, done properly, recovers more usable signal than the non-compliant version most sites are running.
One revenue number, from your own systems
Blended efficiency calculated from your actual revenue and total spend. It cannot be double-counted or inflated by a platform, which is why it is the only paid metric that has not degraded.
Geo holdout test design and analysis
Switch a channel off in matched regions, run it past the purchase cycle, compare against control. It costs real revenue in the test markets and it is the only method here that answers the causal question.
Reporting a finance team will sign
A single view reconciling marketing-reported performance against booked revenue, with the methodology written down so nobody can quietly change models between quarters.
How this runs.
Audit and reconcile
Week 1–2We map every event and compare summed platform-claimed revenue against what your finance system actually recorded. The size of that gap is usually the moment the project gets prioritised.
Rebuild collection
Week 2–4Server-side transmission, deduplication, consent handling, and re-pointing optimisation at the event that correlates with revenue rather than the one that fires most often.
Validate against reality
Week 4–5A parallel run comparing new collection against your order data, because a tracking implementation nobody reconciled is a hypothesis rather than a measurement.
Design the holdout
Week 5–6Matched test and control regions, a run length set by your purchase cycle, and a pre-registered analysis so the result cannot be reinterpreted afterwards.
Read the result and reallocate
Post-testThe incremental figure usually differs sharply from the attributed one, most often on brand search and remarketing. That difference is the budget decision.
Hand over the documentation
OngoingEvent map, methodology and test protocol written down and yours. If you leave, the implementation does not stop making sense.
Marketplaces & Platforms results, in detail.
Full case studies with the numbers, the mistakes, and the recommendations clients didn't want to hear.
Scoped like the core service, no surcharge.
Every engagement is quoted from your actual brief. There's no vertical surcharge for this combination — request a quote and we'll scope it properly.
Audit
Teams who suspect the numbers are wrong and need to know how wrong.
Scoped to your brief
- Full event and tag audit
- Platform vs actual revenue reconciliation
- Consent and compliance review
- Prioritised remediation plan
- Findings session with your team
- Documentation yours to keep
Rebuild
Companies acting on data they cannot currently defend.
Scoped to your brief
- Everything in Audit
- Server-side collection implementation
- Deduplication and consent handling
- Conversion event re-mapping
- Parallel validation against order data
- Blended efficiency reporting
- 60 days of post-launch support
Measurement partner
Accounts where testing needs to be continuous rather than a project.
Scoped to your brief
- Everything in Rebuild
- Quarterly geo holdout programme
- Ongoing reconciliation and QA
- Incrementality-informed budget guidance
- Board-ready reporting pack
- Named analytics lead
All engagements start with a free audit. Prices exclude media spend, which you pay directly to the platforms on accounts you own.
Marketplaces & Platforms questions, answered straight.
GMV tells you the size of what happened and nothing about what constrained it. Two marketplaces with identical GMV can be in completely different positions — one supply-constrained with buyers churning after failed searches, one demand-constrained with providers going idle. The intervention is opposite in each case and GMV cannot distinguish them. Fill rate and failed-search volume can, and neither is expensive to instrument once someone decides to.
Other services for marketplaces
Let's talk about your growth constraint.
Supply acquisition and demand acquisition have different costs, different payback and different urgency. Reporting them as one funnel hides which side is actually the constraint.
Our commitment: The audit is fixed-fee and the findings are yours regardless — including if the conclusion is that your measurement is fine and you should spend the money elsewhere.