Media & Publishing
Ad revenue and subscription access. Operations balance CPM yield, subscriber growth, and content performance as revenue signals.
Business Model
Ad-supported (CPM/CPC) and subscription access — often both in a hybrid model
Revenue Cycle
Audience Growth → Content Engagement → Ad Yield or Subscription Conversion → Retention
RevOps Focus
Ad inventory yield optimisation, subscriber lifecycle management, content-to-revenue attribution
Key Metrics
What this industry measures
Churn Rate
The percentage of customers or revenue lost in a given period due to cancellations, non-renewals, or downgrades — the core measure of customer retention failure.
What it shows
Churn rate shows how fast the business is leaking its customer base. Even moderate churn compounds dramatically — a 2% monthly churn rate means roughly 22% of the customer base disappears every year, requiring constant replacement just to stay flat.
Formula
Customer Churn Rate = Customers Lost in Period ÷ Customers at Start of Period × 100. Revenue Churn Rate = MRR Lost (ex expansion) ÷ Beginning MRR × 100.
LTV
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) — the predicted total revenue a customer generates over the entire duration of their relationship with the business.
What it shows
LTV shows how much a customer is ultimately worth and, when compared to CAC (LTV:CAC ratio), reveals whether the business model is economically viable — a ratio below 3:1 typically signals unit economics that need improvement before scaling.
Formula
LTV = Average Revenue per Customer ÷ Churn Rate. For subscription: LTV = ARPU × Gross Margin % ÷ Monthly Churn Rate.
CAC
Customer Acquisition Cost — the total sales and marketing spend required to acquire one new customer, including headcount, tools, programmes, and all associated overhead.
What it shows
CAC shows how efficiently the business converts sales and marketing investment into new customers. Rising CAC without corresponding LTV growth signals the business is becoming less efficient at growth — a key investor concern at scale.
Formula
CAC = Total Sales & Marketing Spend in Period ÷ Number of New Customers Acquired in Period. Blended CAC includes all S&M spend; segmented CAC can be calculated by channel, segment, or market motion.
Gross Margin
The percentage of revenue remaining after subtracting the direct cost of goods sold (COGS) — for SaaS, COGS includes hosting, support, and customer success costs attributed to delivering the service.
What it shows
Gross margin reveals the inherent profitability of the product at scale. SaaS businesses typically target 70-80% gross margins. Lower margins indicate high delivery costs that constrain the business's ability to invest in growth and reach operating profitability.
Formula
Gross Margin % = (Revenue − COGS) ÷ Revenue × 100. COGS for SaaS includes hosting/infrastructure, third-party licence costs, and direct CS/support team costs.
MRR
Monthly Recurring Revenue — the predictable monthly revenue from all active subscriptions, the most granular measure of recurring revenue momentum.
What it shows
MRR reveals month-over-month health of the subscription base. Analysing MRR movements (new, expansion, contraction, churn) shows precisely where the business is growing and where it is leaking revenue — more granular than ARR alone.
Formula
Sum of all active subscription values normalised to a monthly amount. MRR = ARR ÷ 12 for annual contracts. Monthly contracts contribute their full contracted monthly value.
DAU/MAU
Daily Active Users divided by Monthly Active Users — a ratio measuring the stickiness of a product by showing how frequently monthly users return on a daily basis.
What it shows
A high DAU/MAU ratio (above 0.5) indicates the product is habit-forming and central to users' daily workflows. Low DAU/MAU signals occasional-use patterns — a churn risk indicator for productivity or workflow tools that should be embedded in daily routines.
Formula
DAU/MAU = Average Daily Active Users ÷ Monthly Active Users. A ratio of 0.5 means the average monthly user returns every other day. Define 'active' by a meaningful product action beyond a login.
NPS
Net Promoter Score — measures customer loyalty by asking how likely customers are to recommend the product on a 0-10 scale, segmenting respondents into Promoters (9-10), Passives (7-8), and Detractors (0-6).
What it shows
NPS serves as a leading indicator of churn and expansion. Accounts with low NPS are materially more likely to churn at renewal. Tracking NPS at the account level gives CS teams an early warning signal months before renewal to intervene proactively.
Formula
NPS = % Promoters − % Detractors. Scores range from −100 to +100. Above 50 is considered excellent; above 70 is world-class. Segment by account tier, industry, and cohort for actionable analysis.
ARPU
Average Revenue Per User or Account — the average monthly or annual recurring revenue generated across all active customers.
What it shows
ARPU trends reveal whether the business is moving upmarket (rising ARPU) or acquiring smaller, lower-value customers (declining ARPU). Segmenting ARPU by cohort, channel, or acquisition period identifies where the most valuable customers originate.
Formula
ARPU = Total MRR (or ARR) ÷ Total Number of Active Customers. Calculate monthly or annually and track the trend over time. Segment by plan tier, industry, or geography for strategic insight.
Tech Stack
Tools that power this industry's revenue motion
Stripe
BillingA cloud payments infrastructure platform offering payment processing, subscription billing, invoicing, revenue recognition, and financial data APIs for internet businesses of all sizes.
Used for
RevOps teams at SaaS and PLG companies use Stripe to manage self-serve subscription billing, extract MRR and churn data for financial reporting, and build custom revenue dashboards via Stripe's reporting APIs.
Salesforce
CRMThe world's leading cloud-based CRM platform providing a comprehensive suite for managing customer relationships, sales pipelines, service operations, and marketing automation.
Used for
RevOps teams use Salesforce as the system of record for all revenue data — managing leads, contacts, accounts, opportunities, and forecasts — and as the integration hub that connects all other revenue tools.
Snowflake
Data WarehouseA cloud-native data warehouse platform that separates storage from compute, enabling organizations to store and query massive volumes of structured and semi-structured data across multiple cloud providers.
Used for
RevOps teams use Snowflake as the central analytical layer where CRM, marketing, product, and financial data converge, enabling cross-functional revenue analytics that no single source system can provide.
Segment
OtherTwilio Segment is a customer data platform (CDP) that collects first-party behavioural data from web, mobile, and server sources, standardises it into a common schema, and routes it to hundreds of downstream tools.
Used for
RevOps teams use Segment to create a single source of truth for customer behavioural data, ensuring the same user actions flow consistently into Salesforce, Marketo, Amplitude, and Intercom without duplicate tracking code.
Looker
BI/AnalyticsA Google Cloud business intelligence platform built around a semantic layer (LookML) that defines business metrics once and makes them consistent across all reports and data consumers.
Used for
RevOps teams use Looker to define canonical revenue metrics (ARR, pipeline coverage, win rate) in LookML once, ensuring every team across the business uses the same definitions when querying revenue data.
HubSpot
CRMAn all-in-one CRM platform combining sales, marketing, service, and operations hubs on a shared contact database, popular with mid-market and growth-stage companies.
Used for
RevOps teams use HubSpot to manage the full customer lifecycle from marketing lead capture through deal close and post-sale support, often replacing multiple point solutions with a unified platform.
Amplitude
BI/AnalyticsA digital analytics platform focused on product intelligence, helping teams understand user behavior, measure feature impact, and run experiments to optimise product-led growth.
Used for
RevOps teams in PLG companies use Amplitude to define and monitor PQL cohorts, track activation milestones, and measure how product usage patterns correlate with expansion revenue and retention.