Building the Right eCommerce Media Mix -How AOV and Purchase Frequency Can Shape Media Planning Decisions

 

An eCommerce media plan often starts with channels.

How much should go into Google Ads? What role should paid social play? Should YouTube be part of the mix? Does Connected TV (CTV) make sense? Where can programmatic advertising add value? How much should we invest in remarketing?

But before deciding the channels, there is a more fundamental question:

What kind of purchase are we actually trying to generate?

Two useful signals can help answer that:

Average Order Value (AOV) and purchase frequency.

Neither determines the media plan on its own. But together, they provide a useful lens for understanding the customer journey, acquisition economics, repeat-purchase opportunity and the jobs different media channels may need to perform.

That makes them useful inputs for building the media mix.

1. The Same Media Mix Does Not Fit Every eCommerce Business

Consider four different purchase situations.

1.      Someone buying a mattress may spend several hundred euros but might not need another one for years.

2.      A meal-kit customer can generate a meaningful basket and potentially order repeatedly.

3.      Someone buying a relatively inexpensive sports accessory may make a smaller transaction without creating an obvious near-term repeat purchase.

4.      A fashion customer may have a smaller basket but return several times during the year.

All four are eCommerce customers.

But commercially, they behave very differently.

And if the economics and customer journeys are different, the media plan should be different too.

2. A Simple Planning Lens

Before allocating budget, I would start with two questions:

How much is an average order worth?

How frequently does the customer realistically purchase again?

Put those together and four broad planning profiles emerge:

	Lower Purchase Frequency	Higher Purchase Frequency
Higher AOV	Considered Purchase	High-Value Repeat
Lower AOV	Acquisition-Constrained	High-Velocity Commerce

This isn't designed to permanently classify an entire company.

A retailer can have categories, products or customer segments with very different economics.

The framework is simply a planning lens:

What does the commercial model tell us about the job media needs to perform?

3. Considered Purchase

Higher AOV + Lower Purchase Frequency

Think about Emma and the mattress category.

The purchase is relatively valuable, but the natural replacement cycle is long. The customer may research alternatives, compare products, read reviews and return several times before buying.

The media challenge therefore extends beyond capturing today's demand.

Media may need to:

→ Generate awareness and consideration
→ Explain product differentiation
→ Build confidence during a longer decision journey
→ Capture high-intent category demand
→ Re-engage genuine prospects
→ Convert when purchase intent becomes stronger

Media Mix Implications

Search & Shopping
Strong demand-capture role when consumers actively research products, brands, prices and alternatives.

Paid Social
Useful for discovery, product storytelling, social proof, offers and bringing the product into the consideration set.

YouTube / Online Video
Stronger role where demonstration, differentiation and education can influence consideration.

Connected TV (CTV)
Potentially valuable for broader reach and demand creation when scale, budget and market maturity justify it.

Programmatic Advertising
Can support reach, contextual activation, audience strategies and controlled re-engagement.

Remarketing
Important, but longer consideration should not become an excuse for excessive frequency.

Planning priority: Demand Creation + Consideration + Demand Capture

4. High-Value Repeat

Higher AOV + Higher Purchase Frequency

Now consider a business such as HelloFresh.

Here the commercial equation changes.

The first order matters, but it may represent only part of the customer's potential value if that customer continues ordering.

The media question therefore becomes:

How efficiently can we acquire customers who have the potential to become valuable beyond their first transaction?

Media Mix Implications

Search
Captures existing category demand and consumers actively comparing solutions.

Paid Social
Can play a major acquisition role through proposition-led, promotional and creative-led prospecting.

YouTube / Online Video
Useful for explaining the proposition and building familiarity before acquisition.

Affiliate / Partnership Channels
Potential acquisition role where economics and customer quality can be measured effectively.

Remarketing
Focused on converting meaningful consideration rather than simply following every site visitor.

Retention & Reactivation
Become increasingly important because the economics extend beyond the first transaction.

Here, the first-order Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) doesn't necessarily tell the complete story.

But projected Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) should not become justification for inefficient acquisition either. Repeat behaviour needs to be demonstrated through real customer cohorts.

Planning priority: Acquisition + Customer Quality + Retention

5. Acquisition-Constrained

Lower AOV + Lower Purchase Frequency

Consider selected lower-ticket, occasional-purchase categories within a retailer such as Decathlon.

The transaction value may be relatively small while near-term repeat purchasing is limited.

That creates a difficult acquisition equation.

If there isn't much revenue in the initial basket and limited repeat value afterwards, there is less room to absorb an expensive Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

Media Mix Implications

Search & Shopping
Strong role where identifiable purchase intent already exists.

Paid Social
Can support prospecting, but acquisition economics need particularly close attention.

Retail Media
Potentially valuable where products are distributed through retail environments with strong shopping intent and useful first-party commerce signals.

Remarketing
Needs discipline. Repeatedly paying to chase a relatively small transaction can quickly damage the economics.

Upper-Funnel Media
Still relevant for brands with sufficient scale, but its role and incremental contribution need to be understood clearly.

This profile also creates a question that media optimisation alone cannot answer:

Can we improve the economics of the transaction?

Bundles, complementary products, cross-sell, merchandising and shipping thresholds can increase basket value.

Sometimes improving media efficiency starts outside the advertising platform.

Planning priority: Intent Capture + CAC Discipline + Basket Economics

6. High-Velocity Commerce

Lower AOV + Higher Purchase Frequency

Now consider a fashion commerce model such as Zalando.

Individual baskets may be smaller than major considered purchases, but customers have substantially more opportunities to return and purchase again.

That changes the planning question.

It isn't only:

How efficiently can we generate today's transaction?

It is also:

How efficiently can we acquire customers who continue generating value?

Media Mix Implications

Search & Shopping
Continuous demand capture across categories, products and brands.

Paid Social
Strong role across discovery, product-led creative, prospecting and new-customer acquisition.

YouTube / Online Video
Can create broader demand around categories, collections, seasons and the brand itself.

Programmatic Advertising
Can support reach, prospecting, contextual activation and controlled re-engagement at sufficient scale.

Dynamic Product Advertising
Particularly relevant when the business has a large and frequently changing product catalogue.

Retention & Reactivation
Become strategically important because repeat purchasing contributes to customer economics.

The media plan therefore needs to connect acquisition and retention rather than treating every transaction as an isolated event.

Planning priority: Scalable Acquisition + Repeat Purchase + Reactivation

7. The Media Planning Matrix

Putting the four profiles together makes the differences clearer.

Media Planning Area	Considered Purchase	High-Value Repeat	Acquisition-Constrained	High-Velocity Commerce
Illustrative example	Emma	HelloFresh	Selected Decathlon categories	Zalando
Demand creation	High	High	Selective	High
Demand capture	Very High	High	Very High	Very High
Search & Shopping	High	High	High	High
Paid social prospecting	Medium-High	High	Selective	High
Video	High	Medium-High	Selective	Medium-High
CTV	Scale dependent	Scale dependent	Selective	Scale dependent
Programmatic advertising	Consideration & reach	Supporting role	Selective	Reach & re-engagement
Remarketing	Longer journey	Important	Controlled	Important
Retention / Reactivation	Lower immediate role	Very High	Lower	Very High
CAC flexibility	Higher potential	Repeat-value dependent	Restricted	Repeat-value dependent
Measurement horizon	Longer	Cohort-oriented	Tighter	Transaction + customer value

This is not a channel budget template.

It would be misleading to suggest that every considered-purchase business should spend a fixed percentage on video or that every high-frequency retailer should allocate the same percentage to paid social.

Instead, the framework helps determine something that comes before budget allocation:

What job should each channel perform?

8. From Commerce Economics to Media Plan

A more useful planning sequence is:

Business Economics → Customer Journey → Media Objective → Channel Role → Budget Priority → Measurement

Consider how differently this works across the four profiles.

For a considered purchase, part of the budget may need to create demand before Search eventually captures it.

For a repeat-driven business, acquisition economics can increasingly be evaluated through customer cohorts rather than only transaction one.

For a low-value, low-frequency purchase, the media plan may need to stay much closer to identifiable demand and strict acquisition economics.

For high-velocity commerce, acquisition and retention increasingly become connected parts of the same growth model.

The media mix becomes an output of the commercial strategy, rather than the starting point.

9. Where Should the Next Euro Go?

Purchase frequency also changes one of the biggest eCommerce budget questions:

Acquisition or retention?

For a naturally low-frequency category, repeatedly advertising to existing customers may produce limited incremental value simply because they aren't ready to purchase again.

For a higher-frequency business, ignoring existing customers can mean continually paying to acquire replacements for customers who could potentially have been retained or reactivated.

That influences:

→ New-customer acquisition budgets
→ Existing-customer exclusions
→ CRM audience activation
→ Cross-sell
→ Replenishment
→ Reactivation windows
→ Promotional strategy

The objective isn't to choose acquisition or retention.

It is to find the balance that reflects the economics and natural purchase rhythm of the business.

10. Measurement Should Follow the Business Model

The measurement framework should change too.

A €700 considered purchase and a €60 repeatable purchase shouldn't automatically be evaluated through identical expectations.

Depending on the model, useful business and media metrics can include:

→ Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
→ Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
→ New Customer CAC
→ Contribution margin
→ Repeat purchase rate
→ Customer payback period
→ Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
→ Cohort revenue
→ Incremental revenue

The objective isn't to create a longer KPI dashboard.

It is to measure media against how the business actually creates economic value.

11. What AOV and Purchase Frequency Cannot Tell Us

AOV and purchase frequency are useful planning inputs, but they are not the entire media strategy.

Two businesses occupying similar positions in the framework could still require very different plans because of:

→ Contribution margin
→ Existing brand demand
→ Competitive intensity
→ Market maturity
→ Category behaviour
→ Seasonality
→ Subscription versus transactional models
→ Customer acquisition costs
→ Geographic expansion
→ Promotional dependency
→ Available media budget

The framework therefore shouldn't answer:

“What should our media plan be?”

It should help us ask:

“Given how this business makes money, what should media be expected to do?”

12. The eCommerce Media Planning Checklist

Before turning the strategy into channel budgets, I would want to understand:

→ What is our AOV?

→ How frequently do customers actually purchase?

→ How does that frequency change across customer cohorts?

→ What is the contribution margin after discounts, fulfilment and returns?

→ What can we sustainably afford to pay for a new customer?

→ How quickly does CAC need to pay back?

→ How much category and brand demand already exists?

→ Where does media need to create demand?

→ Where does media need to capture demand?

→ Which channels are best suited to those jobs?

→ How important are repeat purchase and reactivation?

→ What should success look like at the business level?

Only after answering those questions would I start deciding how much budget belongs in each channel.

Build the Media Mix Around the Business

There is no universal eCommerce media mix.

Search, Shopping, paid social, YouTube, Connected TV, programmatic advertising, retail media and other channels can all play valuable roles.

But their importance changes depending on the commercial problem they are being asked to solve.

AOV tells us something about the economics of the transaction.

Purchase frequency tells us something about the opportunity beyond that transaction.

Together, they provide a useful starting point for thinking about customer journeys, acquisition economics, channel roles, retention and measurement.

The question shouldn't begin with:

“Which channels should we use?”

It should begin with:

“How does this business create customer value, and what does media need to do to help create more of it?”