I’m sitting here looking at two spreadsheets side-by-side—one for our Russian market campaigns and one for US markets—and the numbers look like they’re from completely different universes. Same product, basically the same creative, but the ROI metrics aren’t translating in any way that makes sense.
Our micro-influencers in Russia are driving a cost-per-acquisition of about 2,800 rubles. Our equivalent creators in the US are hitting around $22 per acquisition. When I convert the RUB numbers to dollars, from a pure efficiency standpoint, the Russian side looks like it’s crushing it. But intuitively, I know it’s not that simple. The actual profit margin on a $22 acquisition might be way better than a 2,800 RUB acquisition when you factor in product margins and customer lifetime value.
Here’s where I’m stuck: the metrics themselves are measuring different things. Russian Instagram engagement rates are historically higher than US rates, but US followers are typically higher-intent consumers. The sales cycle is different. The product positioning is slightly different between markets. So comparing them directly feels wrong, but not comparing them means I can’t actually understand what’s working globally and what’s working region-specifically.
I’ve tried keeping them separate entirely, but then I can’t justify budget allocation between markets to my leadership. They want to know: “Are we allocating money efficiently across regions?” and I can’t answer that without some framework.
I think part of the issue is that I’m trying to use the same KPIs for both markets when maybe I shouldn’t be. But I’m not sure what that alternative looks like.
How are you handling this? Are you creating completely separate benchmarks for each market, or are you normalizing metrics somehow?
This is a real problem and I think most teams aren’t solving it well. The issue is that you’re right—the metrics aren’t directly comparable because the markets operate on different fundamentals.
Here’s what I do: I keep market-specific benchmarks, but I also track a normalized metric that’s agnostic. For us, that’s “contribution margin per customer acquired” instead of just cost-per-acquisition. That lets us compare across regions at the profit level, not just the revenue level.
So if your Russian customer acquisition is 2,800 RUB but the product margin is higher on RUB sales, maybe your actual profit-per-acquisition is higher in Russia. That’s the number that matters for budget allocation, not the raw cost-per-acquisition.
The other thing: don’t try to keep one global dashboard. Have regional dashboards that are optimized for each market, and then one executive summary that reports on normalized metrics only.
Also—engagement rates in Russia are higher partly because of bot activity and partly because the audience behavior is genuinely different. If you’re not cleaning bot engagement out of your metrics, you’re comparing apples to oranges. We had to implement some pretty strict filters to make our engagement metrics meaningful.
You’ve identified a foundational problem that requires you to step back and think about the business model, not just the campaign metrics.
Here’s my approach: create separate P&Ls for each market at the customer acquisition level. Build in product margins, platform fees, content production costs—everything. Then your ROI metric isn’t just cost-per-acquisition, it’s profit-per-customer at a market level. That automatically handles the currency and market dynamics.
Once you have that framework, budget allocation becomes a calculus question: allocate budget to the region/creator tier that’s generating the highest profit-per-unit. Scale back regions that are underperforming that metric, even if they look good on surface KPIs.
This also lets you have separate target benchmarks for each region, which should be tied to your margin structure, not to arbitrary “industry standards.”
One more thing: make sure you’re measuring retention at a market level too. A $22 US customer might have a lifetime value that’s 5x higher than a Russian customer if they’re repeat buyers. If you’re not factoring that in, you’re making budget decisions on incomplete data.
This is such an operational headache, I feel you. From a workflow perspective, I’ve found that the easiest way to manage this is to have regional “ops leads” who own the benchmarking for their market. They know the nuances better than anyone trying to manage both globally.
What’s helped us: we created a shared template for “what good looks like” regionally, and then regional leads can customize it. Instead of one global KPI, we have principles—like “cost-per-acquisition shouldn’t exceed X% of contribution margin” and let each region define the X.
It’s a bit more complex operationally, but it actually gave us more consistency, not less, because everyone’s working from aligned principles rather than comparing apples to oranges.
I’m curious about this from a creator side: are brands asking us (the creators) to deliver different ROI metrics in different regions, or are you handling that internally? Because I’ve had some brands ask me to hit impossible Instagram engagement targets because they’re comparing me to creators in a different market with different audience dynamics. Just saying that could be a blind spot—creators in each market understand their market’s normal metrics.