I’ve been managing performance campaigns across Russia and the US for a few months now, and I just realized we have a silent killer in our operation: completely different KPI definitions.
Here’s what I mean:
For our Russia campaigns, we’re tracking engagement, impressions, and estimated reach. Those are the metrics our creator partners care about, and historically they’ve been predictive of sales in the Russian market.
For our US campaigns, we’re tracking click-through rates, landing page conversion, and CAC. Different metrics because the US market moves faster and we need tighter attribution.
Sounds reasonable, right? Except now when I try to measure a unified campaign that runs in both markets, I have no way to compare them. Am I comparing apples to apples? Are the campaigns equally good, or does one market just have different metrics by design?
Worse: when I present to my team or leadership, we’re all interpreting “success” differently. Someone looks at Russia’s engagement metrics and thinks the campaign crushed it. Someone else looks at US CAC and thinks it was mediocre. We’re not wrong—we’re just measuring different things.
So the real cost is invisible: we’re optimizing both campaigns simultaneously without actually knowing if we’re making the same trade-offs or completely different ones.
Have you dealt with this? How do you actually standardize KPIs without either ignoring legitimate market differences or creating a measurement system so complicated that nobody uses it?
This is the exact problem I spent four months solving. Here’s the framework that actually worked:
Step 1: Define your business outcome (the north star)
Not a vanity metric. The thing that actually matters to your business. For us, it was customer acquisition cost and repeat purchase rate. Everything else serves that.
Step 2: Map each market’s metrics to that outcome
Russia: engagement → impression quality → click → conversion → CAC (but calculated differently because the sales funnel is different)
US: click-through → landing conversion → CAC (more direct attribution)
But the endpoint is the same: CAC and repeat purchase.
Step 3: Create conversion tables
Historically, what engagement rate in Russia converts to what CAC? What CTR in the US converts to what CAC? Build these relationships from actual data.
Now when you compare campaigns, you translate everything to CAC, which is your universal metric. A Russia campaign with “high engagement” translates to X CAC. A US campaign with “high CTR” translates to Y CAC. Now you can actually compare them.
Step 4: Keep market-specific metrics for operational purposes
Russia team still tracks engagement (because that’s what they can control in the moment). US team still tracks CTR. But when you step back for reporting or optimization decisions, everything translates to CAC.
The beauty: you’re not forcing both markets into the same box. You’re acknowledging their differences while still maintaining a common language for comparison.
How many months of historical data do you have from each market? That’s what you need to build those conversion tables.
You’ve identified a critical operations gap. Here’s how I’d fix it:
At the top level, you need ONE north star metric. Everything else is a supporting metric. For most performance campaigns, that’s either CAC or ROAS (return on ad spend). Pick one that actually reflects your business.
Then, build a hierarchy:
- Tier 0 (The north star): CAC or ROAS (measures outcome, same for both markets)
- Tier 1 (Market leading indicators): Engagement (Russia), CTR (US) (lead to CAC, but different in each market)
- Tier 2 (Operational metrics): Impression quality, audience overlap, sentiment (help you optimize the campaign day-to-day)
Then, create a dashboard with three views:
- Unified view: Both markets shown side-by-side with the north star metric. This is for executive reporting.
- Russia operational view: Engagement-focused, with CAC calculated from that engagement. This is for the Russia team to optimize.
- US operational view: CTR-focused, with CAC calculated from that CTR. This is for the US team to optimize.
Both teams are optimizing their operational metrics, but at the end of the day, you’re measuring success against the same north star.
The key discipline: Every Tuesday, both markets translate their operational metrics to the north star and compare. “Russia campaign had 2.5% engagement, which historically converts to $28 CAC. US campaign had 3.8% CTR, which converts to $32 CAC. Roughly even performance, but Russia has more room to optimize engagement further.” That’s the conversation that moves ROI.
What’s your current conversion from impressions to actual revenue? That’s where your unified KPI bridge starts.
This is real and it’s tricky. But I’d add another dimension to what Анна and Mark are saying: get your partners aligned on KPIs too.
Here’s what I’ve seen happen: you define KPIs internally, but then the creator in Russia is optimizing for engagement (because that’s what they’ve always done), and the agency in the US is optimizing for conversion (because that’s what clients pay them for). Y’all are measuring the same campaign but pulling in different directions.
So make KPI alignment part of the partnership agreement. Before a campaign launches, sit down with your partners and agree: “We’re measuring success on CAC. Here’s what that means. Here’s how we’re tracking it. Here’s what you should optimize for.”
Then when things go sideways, you’re not blaming each other for different measurement approaches—you’re aligned on what “sideways” actually means.
Also: transparency is everything. Share your KPI conversion tables with your partners. “Look, here’s historically how engagement in your market correlates to our CAC. Let’s use that as our baseline.” Partners who understand your measurement logic are way more likely to hit targets because they understand the “why” behind the metrics.
The partnerships get stronger when both sides are measuring success the same way.
From the creator side, KPI misalignment shows up as:
-
Confusing briefs. If you tell me “we care about engagement” but also “we need conversion,” I don’t know what to optimize for. Different content strategies.
-
Unclear feedback. “That post underperformed” but I don’t know if that means low engagement, low click-through, or low conversion. So I can’t learn.
-
Inconsistent partnerships. If first campaign we optimize for engagement, second campaign we optimize for conversion, it feels like you don’t have a plan.
So when you’re alignment KPIs across markets, also clearly communicate what that means to creators. “For this series of campaigns, we’re optimizing for X metric because our business goal is Y.” That clarity makes our work better.
Also: don’t make too many KPIs. I’ve gotten briefs with five KPIs where they’re all equally important. That’s just confusion. Pick one or two things we should actually care about, and let the other metrics happen naturally.
Agency perspective: KPI misalignment kills partnerships faster than anything else.
Here’s why: if we’re running your US campaign and you want us to optimize for engagement, but you’re measuring success on CAC internally, we’re going to burn out trying to hit your public metric while you’re silently frustrated about the CAC. We fail.
So from my side, I’d say: be upfront about your north star metric from the first conversation. Not just “we care about CAC,” but “here’s our baseline CAC, here’s our target CAC, here’s what we’ll consider a win.” Give us that target early.
Then build the brief around that metric. The creative strategy, the audience targeting, the media spend allocation—all of that should serve your north star. When an agency understands the business objective, we can actually do our job well.
Also: share historical data. “Here’s what our campaigns have looked like in the past. Here’s typically what we spend to hit this CAC.” That helps us scope realistic timelines and budgets, instead of setting targets that are impossible.
Unified KPIs across markets is a good goal. Just make sure the agencies and creators understand why you’re unifying them.