Profitable growth, proven — not promised.

Across the portfolio, Marathon grows the business on the metrics that matter: contribution dollars, incrementality, and conversion-rate gains that compound across the P&L.

Updated July 2026. Brands anonymized to category. All figures from client systems of record.

More profit in the long term — and the short term.

Operators, not theorists

In every account we've taken over, we've seen immediate improvement — not the "trough of despair." We've made the expensive mistakes already, on our own money.

Contribution before vanity

The scoreboard is revenue, contribution dollars, new customers, and MER — not platform-reported ROAS or last-click credit.

Measured, then scaled

Geo-holdouts isolate brand-media lift, while CRO winners only ship when the test earns its way to 100% of traffic.

Proven incremental return on brand media.

Each result below is a controlled geo-holdout incrementality test isolating brand campaigns — every dollar of return is incremental, with the confidence range shown.

Lifestyle Food & Beverage · ~$40M
1.97x
Validated incremental brand ROAS
6-month geo-holdout measuring brand media only — the honest test of whether spend drove new demand.
Retail impact vs ecom2x
Vs saturated direct response>2x
Total-business revenue, January YoY+28.7%
Beauty & Skincare · ~$100M
2.38x
Validated incremental brand ROAS
~4-month geo-holdout (98-day test + 30-day follow-up) across DTC, marketplace, and TikTok Shop. Bayesian synthetic control.
Measured halo onto TikTok Shop>40%
Vs every DR incrementality test+40%
Raw ROAS incl. TikTok Shop0.97x → 1.82x
Outdoor & Recreation
2.85x
Adjusted incremental brand ROAS at a major retail partner
Geo-holdout measuring brand-campaign impact on wholesale sell-through. Excludes all DTC channels to isolate the retail halo.
Channel isolatedRetail sell-through

Real business impact — fast.

Recent examples across consumer brands where growth and profitability moved together, including several early-window wins from the first ~90 days with Marathon.

Health & Wellness (Supplements)
+33%
Total-business revenue ran about a third higher than the Q1 average — and far more efficiently.
May 2026 vs the Q1 monthly average.
Marketing efficiency+64% MER, 2.54x → 4.16x
New-customer revenue+46%, roughly 2x efficiency
Amazon / Shopify+108% / +20%
Why it matters

Most brands buy growth by giving up efficiency. This was the opposite: the business got bigger and more profitable at the same time.

Premium Apparel Brand
+60.4%
Year-over-year contribution growth nearly 5x after Marathon engaged.
YoY growth, pre-engagement (+12.6%) vs post (+60.4% with +47.9pp acceleration).
Revenue YoY (April / May)+36.7% / +21.4% (vs +4.8% pre)
Contribution margin22.7% (+7.6% YoY)
New-customer revenue YoY+14.9% (+3.9pp accel)
CPG Brand
4 records
Revenue, profit, efficiency, and new-customer highs in a single week.
Week of June 1-7, 2026 — barely 60 days into the engagement.
Record revenue weeks2 back to back, first outside Black Friday
ProfitHighest-profit week in 6 months
New-customer revenue+30% WoW at 1.4x efficiency
Revenue per sessionHighest of the year
Why it matters

Revenue, profit, efficiency, and new-customer growth all hit highs in the same window — broad-based real impact, not a cherry-pick.

Athletic Apparel Brand
+13.0%
Contribution growth swung from negative to +13% YoY post-engagement.
YoY growth, pre-engagement (-2.9%) vs post (+13.0% with +15.9pp swing).
Revenue YoY (Feb–May)+1.1% (vs -0.9% pre)
Revenue YoY (April)+9.0% (single best month)
Automotive
+20.1%
Contribution-margin dollars YoY
$17.4M → $20.8M on $72.2M → $82.6M revenue.
Contribution margin rate24.0% → 25.2%
Wellness
+37%
New-customer revenue, post-engagement
May vs March 2026 — acquisition scaled while spend fell.
Revenue / spend+25% / −14%
Marketing efficiency (MER)+45%

New customer CAC has come down 30%.

After 2 months measuring with Marathon

Profit is up 4x. We just had our best day ever outside of BFCM.

After 6 weeks of brand-optimized spend

This ad has the lowest CAC of any ad I’ve run in 4 months—and it’s on my most expensive product.

An organic post they never would have used as an ad without Marathon

We do CRO, too — and it compounds into the P&L.

Beyond media, Marathon runs a continuous, structured on-site testing program. Only validated winners ship to 100% of traffic, so the upside keeps paying across paid and organic sessions while failed tests cost nothing but a sharper read on what works.

Validated winners, live to 100% of traffic — and compounding

Conservative annualization from each winner's own page or segment GA revenue.

A CRO win lifts the value of every future session, not just one channel's spend. That makes it one of the most under-rated levers in growth.
~$2.4M Annualized revenue from rolled-out winners Live to 100% of traffic
+~$0.8M Tests in flight Early signal; pipeline building
~$3.2M/yr Total CRO pipeline And compounding
Subscription CPG Brand · Homepage CRO
+27.5%
Revenue per visitor on the brand’s most-trafficked page
A homepage hero A/B test increased revenue per visitor from $3.98 to $5.08 at 97% statistical confidence. Marathon Engine ran the experiment, measurement, analysis, and rollout end to end; the winning hero is now live to 100% of traffic.
DTC Accessories · CRO
+24%
Desktop conversion-rate lift from an A/B test
Controlled A/B test on the collection-header layout. A conversion lift compounds across every media dollar spent after rollout.

Two engagements, start to finish.

What the starting state looked like, what we changed, and the result.

Premium Performance Apparel · ~$75M · DTC + Retail + Wholesale

From "gut-feel" allocation to measured contribution growth.

Starting state

Thin, volatile contribution margin, and a decision framework the VP of Marketing described as "not formulaic — a gut decision."

What we did

Ran brand + performance as one system on Marathon Data; reallocated the least-efficient spend; defended brand investment with measured incremental return.

Result

Contribution dollars +32%, revenue +39%, and new-customer revenue +37% — Mar–May 2026 monthly average vs the Jan–Feb pre-engagement baseline — with discount rate down 3.1pp. No trough.

Lifestyle Food & Beverage · ~$40M

Proving brand pays — 1.97x incremental, validated by a controlled holdout.

Starting state

Performance-saturated, with brand spend that was unmeasured — and therefore impossible to defend or fund.

What we did

Ran a six-month geo-holdout isolating brand campaigns on Marathon Data, measuring incremental revenue against a matched control.

Result

1.97x validated incremental brand ROAS; 2x larger lift in retail than ecom; more than 2x the return of saturated direct response; total-business revenue +28.7% YoY in January. No trough.

Why these numbers hold up.

01

Causal, not correlational. Incremental ROAS comes from geo-holdout tests — comparing matched markets with and without brand spend — not last-click or platform-reported attribution.

02

Contribution dollars, not vanity. Results are measured in profit (revenue minus variable costs), new-customer revenue, and LTV-weighted payback — the numbers a CFO can defend.

03

Confidence ranges shown. Every incrementality result carries its confidence interval. When the whole range sits above breakeven, the call is clear.

04

Traceable to the system of record. Every figure ties back to the brand's own data in Cube, Shopify, Amazon, and the platform ledger — not a slide we made up.

See what we'd measure for your brand.

Get your brand value to see the incremental revenue your brand activity is creating — or learn more about Marathon Engine if you want the operator team to run the full system.

Brands anonymized to category to protect our customers. Contribution figures combine actual revenue with each brand's standard variable-cost assumptions. Pre/post YoY framing isolates Marathon's engagement period from the same months a year prior. CRO revenue is conservatively annualized from each winner's own page or segment GA revenue. Incremental ROAS figures are from controlled geo-holdout measurement; all figures trace to the brand's system of record.