Australian ecommerce performance agency, Elephant Room, has unveiled its new BFCM (Black Friday Cyber Monday) Benchmark Performance Index .
The index is a performance intelligence platform, that provides brands with a data-led framework to help plan, predict and perform during the biggest retail season of the year. It is designed to decode trading patterns for brands as they move through the peak retail periods of Black Friday (November 28), Cyber Monday (December 1) and the Boxing Day post-Christmas sales.
By bringing together millions of campaign data points from the agency’s 2024 BFCM activity, spanning November 2024 to January 2025, the index offers real, comprehensive and actionable insights for strategic planning, budget allocation and campaign optimisation, giving businesses a deeper look into how they forecast spend, protect efficiencies and bring certainty into Q4 trading.
This is the first time that Elephant Room has given brands access to its unique data sets, which have been shaped by its nearly 10 years of Q4 and BCFM performance expertise.
Brands can use the index for insights on optimal launch timing, showing them when to activate campaigns and sales, plus revenue forecasting, allowing them to set targets grounded in real performance data, spend optimisation, to navigate the demand surges and media inflation, and competitive benchmarking across clicks, impressions, revenue and conversion rates.
The index includes a Daily Revenue Completion graph which shows that Black Friday typically drives 7.8 per cent of monthly revenue. It can track the CPM patterns showing that costs peak on Black Friday, then drop in December, plus how to pace ad spend on how actual CPMs and CPCs compare to the index benchmarks, so if a brand is tracking above the average CPM inflation from November 7 onwards, spend can either be pulled back or pushed harder.
The data also shows that brands launching sales around November 17 see a strong conversion lift. Platform mix optimisation reveals that TikTok shows lower CPMs but Meta/Google deliver higher CTRs.
The index is designed to track critical acquisition benchmarks, such as CPM, CPC and revenue completion rate, to show how the market responds as brands enter sale mode. For example, the index can model daily media inflation trends, like rising CPMs and CPCs after November 7, which advise brands on how to reallocate budgets and sustain conversion rates. It can also track how revenue completion curves shift through the month, guiding brands on when to launch hype, early access or major sale events.
“For more than a decade, our team has poured thousands of hours into cracking the code of Q4 performance. Every year, we build sophisticated ad forecasts, budgets and pacing strategies for the critical BFCM/Boxing Day retail trading period,” said Elephant Room managing director, Adam Sharon-Zipser.
“The app essentially gives you a ‘weather forecast’ for the BFCM period so you can plan budgets, set targets, and adjust tactics based on proven patterns across 65+ brands and millions in ad spend.
“Now, we’re opening our playbook. We’re giving brands a live read on what’s driving results, helping them plan smarter around launch timing, spend, and revenue targets.
“By leveraging real, anonymised campaign data from across our portfolio, we’re giving brands the confidence and precision they need to plan, predict and perform, during a period that can account for up to 30 per cent of their annual revenue.
“Our new BFCM Benchmark Performance Index is a powerful planning tool for budgeting and strategy. We’ve found it invaluable and we’re confident other brands will too.”
Elephant Room, specialises in creative, paid media strategies, out-of-home media buying, and data measurement.
Established in 2014, the Sydney-based agency has worked with dozens of leading and emerging retail brands, including AJE, Bed Threads, Go-To, Assembly Label and Stone & Wood, to accelerate growth in performance marketing.
This year, Elephant Room expanded its international remit, working with major global brands like Outcast Clothing, Khy by Kylie Jenner and Ksubi.
