Ecommerce Playbook: Numbers, Struggles & Growth Understanding Spend vs. aMER, and Spending Power
Aug 14, 2025
In this engaging discussion, Luke Austin, the VP of E-Commerce Strategy at CTC, delves into the Spend & aMER Model, a powerful forecasting tool for brands. He shares insights on why many 8–9 figure brands are shocked by their actual efficiency curves. Luke highlights the crucial balance between spending decisions and top-line revenue growth, as well as the uniqueness of each brand's spending power. Listeners will discover strategies for optimizing budgets and improving long-term customer value, making it a must-listen for e-commerce enthusiasts!
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Forecasting Starts With Spend & aMER
- The Spend & aMER model is the starting point for forecasting and budgeting across channels.
- It sets optimal total budget allocation by projecting new-customer revenue and contribution margin.
Ensemble Modeling Improves Reliability
- The model ensembles dozens of predictive approaches to avoid extreme or implausible forecasts.
- CTC runs ~40 models and combines reasonable ones into an ensemble to best reflect past and future behavior.
Always Backtest Your Ensemble
- Backtest ensemble outputs against past months to measure accuracy.
- Aim for model error within a reasonable bound (typically ~5–10%).