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If you’re here, you know Brand matters—but proving its revenue impact feels impossible. The irony? Fear of hurting your short-term ROAS is stopping you from making the transition you know you need to make. But that same obsession with short-term ROAS is what got your brand in this position in the first place. Every brand hits this crossroads. Some invest in Brand, take the short-term ROAS hit, and thrive after that. Others let fear win, stay obsessed with short-term ROAS, and discount themselves out of business. At Chubbies, we lived this. Performance marketing worked—until it didn’t. Growth stalled, acquisition costs skyrocketed. We knew we needed to raise awareness and create content we were proud of. Instead, we doubled down on ads that screamed: Buy now to get 50% off! paired with lifeless product shots. No value to the consumer. No reason why we were the brand they should choose. Just price and features—which always ends in a race to the bottom. The biggest obstacle? We couldn’t measure Brand’s revenue impact as clearly as performance marketing. Our (imperfect but workable) solution: treating an Instagram follow like a purchase—a conversion with revenue attached. Rather than tracking revenue from same-day clicks, we measured it over 30, 60, 90, even 180 days. Specifically, we measured resilient baseline revenue: revenue from organic search and direct traffic. By connecting the engagements we drove through ads and organic posts to 90-day baseline revenue, we turned Brand marketing into something measurable. It became performance marketing. The result? Chubbies grew to a $100M+ acquisition—right when iOS 14 was rolling out. Here’s what changed: In our “midlife crisis,” 20% of new customer acquisition came from owned and organic traffic. By the time of acquisition, that number was 70%. This shift came from reallocating budget to top-of-funnel campaigns that boosted our best organic posts. Instead of chasing short-term ROAS, we focused every dollar on driving incremental, high-quality purchases (ones that wouldn’t have happened without the ad). The impact? Contribution margin—and contribution dollars—started climbing. And they kept climbing. Any brand can do the same. They just need the data. We’re building Marathon to give you that data. To help you balance Brand and Performance in a measurable way no other tool does. Now let’s go build fast-growing, profitable brands, shall we?
🔄 Escape the short–term ROAS hamster wheel
by making data-driven decisions that not only fill your funnel but keep it flowing
📊 Connect your efforts to real revenue
in real–time, just like your direct response ads
⏰ No more waiting 6 months for vague results
see how engagements predict future revenue based on your brand's historical performance
💸 Invest in what you know is right for your brand
without sacrificing accountability
See the total value driven by your advertising
Using our Brand-Mix-Model we can track the resilient baseline revenue from brand-building behaviors driven by your media, and compare that to the short-term metrics we know and love so that you can optimize for total value creation instead of short-term revenue spikes.
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Quantify the $$ your organic social channels are driving - per post
Your organic channels are now revenue–driving performance marketing channels without needing to hammer your audience with a "15% OFF FOR THE NEXT 12 MINUTES IF YOU USE CODE "NOBRAND" AT CHECKOUT".
A daily measure of Brand that links digital engagements directly to bottom-line growth
Our Brand measure is 1) behavioral vs. surveyed, 2) real-time vs. months old, 3) rooted in engagements you are already optimizing for, and 4) tied directly to bottom-line growth in your business
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Build real asset value
Long–term, sustainable profits come when you build revenue you can count on — not the fleeting bursts from ever–increasing promotional periods and expanding direct–response ad spend. Businesses built this way are 1) easier to run, 2) more profitable, 3) better protected from competitive pressure, and 4) more likely to reach an exit (see reasons 1->3) or to simply spit off huge amounts of cash.
Brought to you by Chubbies co-founders Preston and Tom Why We're Sharing This: Chubbies almost went out of business because of the exact problem we're trying to solve at Marathon. In the early days at Chubbies we built Brand because we had to. We had no money. We were scrappy, creative, dynamic. And we built an awesome Brand. Then we monetized that Brand with performance DR. We convinced ourselves that that was the source of our growth. We almost went out of business. We righted the ship and built, brick by brick, to a >$100m exit, culminating in a >$1B IPO, but to do that we had to overcome the overwhelming pressure to take a short-termist approach. As we've seen this direct-to-consumer brand market evolve over the years, we've seen the same cycle happen to nearly every other business out there: Starting hot, pushing performance marketing, then stalling out and never getting to long-term sustainable growth. This was the problem we felt absolutely compelled to solve because we felt for these brand builders and entrepreneurs. We were in their shoes. And but for a whole lotta luck and a gritty-a** team, it would have sunk us. Then we looked around and realized there just isn't anything on the market that helps companies do this - this most important thing imaginable. So that's what we're working towards, would love your feedback.
About our Brand Mix Model
Every day a subset of your target audience is taking action towards your brand in the form of searches, mentions, comments, shares, likes, follows, visits, and the list goes on.
Just like your business, the volume of these behaviors varies widely over time. And when you look across many businesses across many different industries, you can start to build a very sophisticated model for the relationship between changes in the volumes and degree of digital brand behaviors and growth in the resilient revenue of any given business.
By tapping in the most talented data scientists in the world to work on this problem, that's just what we've done. Our model maps hundreds of millions of digital audience engagements to billions of dollars of baseline revenue to find the strongest, most statistically sound relationships and bring them to you in the form of real baseline dollars to your business.
Ordinarily, a model of this magnitude would cost a Fortune 500 company on the order of $50m+, but because we are using a digital measure of brand, and because our model gets better with every single customer we add to the platform, we can bring it to you for effectively 0% of that cost.
"You've got to protect the Brand, you've got to enhance it in every way. You've got to get a promise in people's minds that gets delivered [...]"
- Warren Buffett
At Chubbies, we found there was no technology tool to give us the ROI data on the long term, resilient baseline of revenue we were building. Because of that, we became too short-term revenue focused. We started to build a bubblegum and duct taped manual version of this at Chubbies, and when we incorporated it into our feedback loop and operating framework, it helped us drive more of our acquisition from organic, which increased our contribution margin. The only way we could get to those results, however, was having data that we as the founders and marketers believed in, and second, that our CFO approved of. Not selling anything, just letting you know what we did, and if you think it could solve a problem you're dealing with, check it out. If not, keep doin' what you're doin if it's working for you.
What we believe As cofounders of Chubbies (10 yr journey to a 9-figure acquisition), we learned a few things that inform why we're doing this. 1. Everything we do as marketers (DR ads, organic socials, influencer, partnerships, etc etc) drives both short and long-term revenue. 2. Short term has been the focus since it's easy to measure, but it leads only leads to increasing CAC, discounting, and driving growth with offers and urgency. 3. We learned that measuring the long term revenue from our marketing (DR included) is where profitable growth comes from. 4. However, it has historically been impossible to quantify it, so we didn't get CFO approval to invest in it because the 'ROI isn't clear. 5. After being overly reliant on short term performance marketing ROAS as the only definition of success, we almost went out of business. With our backs against the wall, we found ways to measure the long term ROI so we could confidently invest in things that don't show high short term ROAS, but drive long term, more-resilient revenue. That's what Marathon Data does.
Brought to you by Chubbies co-founders Preston and Tom
Why We're Doing This:
Chubbies almost went out of business because of the exact problem we're trying to solve at Marathon. In the early days at Chubbies we built Brand because we had to. We had no money. We were scrappy, creative, dynamic. And we built an awesome Brand.
Then we monetized that Brand with performance DR. We convinced ourselves that that was the source of our growth. We almost went out of business.
We righted the ship and built, brick by brick, to a >$100m exit, culminating in a >$1B IPO, but to do that we had to overcome the overwhelming pressure to take a short-termist approach.
As we've seen this direct-to-consumer brand market evolve over the years, we've seen the same cycle happen to nearly every other business out there: Starting hot, pushing performance marketing, then stalling out and never getting to long-term sustainable growth.
This was the problem we felt absolutely compelled to solve because we felt for these brand builders and entrepreneurs. We were in their shoes. And but for a whole lotta luck and a gritty-a** team, it would have sunk us.
Then we looked around and realized there just isn't anything on the market that helps companies do this - this most important thing imaginable.
So that's what we're working towards, would love your feedback.
Welcome to the era of
Measure the long-term $$ and ROAS of DR, top-of-funnel, social posts, IG follows, TT comments, etc. Built by & for growth marketers. Loved by CFO's.
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What is Marathon?Marathon is a tool to measure the revenue impact from your Brand building efforts by looking at how the engagements you've earned on your ads and social posts (likes, shares, etc) have led to revenue in the past and showing you that information. Engagements are the modern day version of survey results, which have been used forever as the way to quantify the revenue you'd make from Brand efforts. Example: If a big brand does a big brand campaign, they'll run a survey program and compare the results after the brand campaign to the results before the campaign. From that difference, they'll use custom models built by expensive marketing measurement consultancies to predict how the change in survey results (e.g., unaided brand awareness increased 1%!!!) will lead to revenue over the next 6, 12, or 14 months. Think of engagements as little survey results, not as an action someone takes that you then track until they purchase. With survey results, 5000 surveys represents overall demand for your product. You don't track those 5000 people to see if they purchase. Those 5000 responses are simply a proxy for overall demand, and the results from that proxy represent the change in overall demand. The biggest brands in the world will survey 3000-5000 people per quarter. That's not a very representative or statistically significant sample size. However, brands like ours generate hundreds of thousands, and even millions of little survey results (engagements on ads and social posts) every quarter. Billion dollar brands have been using these revenue predictions from a small sample size of survey results to quantify the return from their brand marketing for nearly a century. Now, with Marathon, modern brands get access to the same toolkit, but based on 1000000x the data inputs, making the prediction that much more accurate. Welcome to the era of accountable brand building.
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What actions can I take with Marathon that a) are different from other tools and b) will make me more money?TLDR: You'll probably start spending 10-100x more money on things you've known are needed to build the brand but don't drive short-term revenue. This could include the following: influencer that doesn't push a code or immediate purchase seeding more investment in organic content (since you now know how much money you make from each organic post) boosting organic posts with a big portion of your overall marketing budget (e.g., 25%) even though there's no taking those organic posts and running them in engagement-optimized campaigns focused on post engagements (e.g., 25% of marketing budget) taking those same post IDs and running them as ads in conversion-optimized ad sets (e.g., 25%) (separate ad set from your existing DR ads that are proven winners at driving short-term revenue, so these ads can get spend) How is this different from today? These tactics above might be 5-10% of your overall marketing budget today. With Marathon, you might see that they should comprise 80% or more of your marketing budget. So the potential shift in marketing capital allocation could be massive. This was exactly what happened at Chubbies, helping us transition from a minimally profitable company growing slower and slower every year to a materially profitable brand growing revenue at a rate reminiscent of the early days. BEFORE TRANSITION: Specifically, we were in a place where roughly 20% of our new customer revenue came from organic search and direct, and roughly a break-even business growing maybe 10% annually when we hit our midlife crisis. AFTER TRANSITION: We ultimately got to a place where we had about 70%-75% of new customer acquisition coming through owned in organic traffic sources, about 15% EBITDA margins, and growing multiples faster. More info on specific tactics here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ad0rE2TABYCTIWlgcB47ARK8wgUNVMB4oiifWDpzxoU/edit?tab=t.0
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How are you different from other marketing measurement tools?TL;DR: we're strictly focused on helping you increase your long term baseline of revenue. All other tools focus on the short term, specifically analyzing how you can best allocate your spend within and across channels to drive the greatest short term revenue. Both things are important. We just realized the long term base sales measurement was missing in the market while at Chubbies, so we had to find some ways to start to measure how we were driving long term quality revenue to compliment our short term revenue efforts, which we never stopped doing. This helped us find our balance of "Brand" and "DR", which took us from a fast-growing unprofitable business to a fast growing, and very profitable, business.
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What do you measure?We are all about helping you increase your long term, resilient, baseline of branded organic search revenue. "Resilient" simply means we remove the spikes that are short-term influencers on the branded search number that doesn't represent a true increase in the baseline. Things like launching a sale, bursts in spend, launching a new product, etc represent those spikes. We also seasonally adjust the figures to make apples-to-apples comparisons easier.
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HOW do you calculate 180 Day Baseline Revenue from Direct Engagements (aka Brand Value)?If you just want to watch our Co-Founder Tom explain exactly how it works in his own words, scroll down and enjoy: If you prefer to read, here you go: First, I'll define: 180d Brand Value from Direct Engagements represents the next 180 day baseline revenue of your brand engagements. Think of this as the next 180 day cohort value of the new engagements you created in any given time, as measured in incremental growth in your resilient baseline revenue. So, to get ROAS... we just divide the 180d Brand Value from Direct Engagements (engagements directly on the ad unit) by spend on that ad. Then, to get to total value and total ROAS, we just add the 180 day output to 7day click revenue data imported directly from meta. To get to the actual values: We look at your GA revenue as far back as we can. Then, we isolate resilient baseline revenue (remove spikes and seasonally adjust), which is revenue from organic branded search, organic social referral, and direct The historical analysis focuses on how engagements (social engagements, email subscribes, sms, etc) drive incremental baseline revenue over 180 day periods throughout your past so we can then help you understand what it might look like on a forward-looking basis The numbers are conservative. We're not trying to claim all your revenue like meta or google. Just helping you understand what comprises your baseline revenue so you can better understand how to systematically increase it with your channels, tactics, and creative (both paid and organic) But most importantly, when you see your brand's data in the platform live, it'll click.
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Did you use this at Chubbies?Yes, the operating frameworks we developed at Chubbies came out of necessity after almost going out of business. We were too reliant on short-term, paid direct response revenue, specifically measured on a 1-day click basis. We needed to find a more sustainable way to grow profitably. The most profitable growth came from branded organic search revenue. To achieve this, we used a makeshift, manual version of the principles now reflected in Marathon Data, which allowed us to quantify the long-term revenue returns from non-purchase digital responses. At Chubbies, this approach was a small-scale version of what we now measure with Marathon Data. It gave our team—marketers, CFO, CEO, etc.—the confidence to invest in strategies where the main KPI was not 1-day click ROAS, but rather 90- or 180-day revenue. This shift in measurement helped us fill the funnel with potential customers who were primed to buy when they came in-market. Our marketing approach became less focused on product offers, urgency, and discounts, and more on making people laugh, share, and build a positive view of Chubbies as the go-to shorts brand. While this approach resulted in a lower short-term ROAS, it ultimately drove more long-term revenue growth. We reached more people and prepared them better, rather than pushing for an immediate purchase (see the 95/5 rule). As a result, our contribution margin increased, generating more cash to reinvest in marketing, product development, or, dare I say, profits. Over the long term, we found that these customers were less discount-dependent and had a higher LTV (lifetime value), measured on a contribution margin basis—revenue minus discounts, ad spend, agency costs, content creation costs, fulfillment, and product COGs. This deeper understanding of the quality of our revenue highlighted just how critical branded search revenue was to our growth strategy.
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What is the definition of Baseline revenue?Paid: All revenue sources not specified in 'Triggered' or 'Baseline', including but not limited to Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Tiktok Ads, etc. Triggered: Revenue attributed to email and SMS marketing campaigns. Baseline: Revenue generated from organic search, direct traffic, and organic social referrals. Additionally, in order to truly understand the revenue you'll have left if you turn off your ads and discounts (a.k.a your brand) we removed spikes and seasonally adjusted the numbers.
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Do you factor in engagements from mentions and influencers?Working on it LITERALLY as I type this. Well, not me, but people much smarter than me. Should be available in the next couple weeks.
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Is this a silver bullet panacea for all my brand's woes?Nope. Like every metric and every measurement tool, they are all imperfect, and to be blunt, they're all wrong in their own beautiful little way. But as marketers, it's our job to apply our judement and pattern recognition and common sense to triangulate and get to an operating model that works for our brand at our stage, etc. The output from Marathon Data is exactly the same. Even though this is the case, we're so excited about it because measurement and clear action items in how to built the long term resilient baseline revenue is completely missing from any other measurement tool. All other measurement platforms are focused on how to spend money to make short term revenue. That's important, but we ALSO need to be systematically building the long term resilient baseline of revenue (AKA the revenue that remains when you turn everything else off) in parallel. That's the only way to profitably build a modern brand that keeps adding margin accretive growth dollars after a decade in existence. Trust us, we know.
