MIDE · Digital performance review
Year over year · Channel performance

The growth
paradox

MIDE nearly doubled its audience in 90 days — yet revenue didn't follow. This is the story of where the traffic came from, and why value didn't come with it.

▲92.8%
Total users vs 2025
▼5.9%
Purchase revenue vs 2025
−74%
Organic Search revenue
28 Apr → 27 Jul2026 vs 202590 days Built with Claude CodePowered by Coupler.io · GA4
A person looking out toward the horizon
02The topline

Twice the audience.
Slightly less money.

Every acquisition metric surged. Revenue quietly slipped. The gap between those two facts is the whole report.

Total users23,554▲92.8% · was 12,218
Sessions27,934▲53.8% · was 18,158
New users17,166▲324% · was 4,046
Purchase revenue€117.7k▼5.9% · was €125.1k
Weekly users — this year vs last 2026 2025

2026 sits above 2025 in all 13 comparable weeks. Both curves cool through summer. Partial final week (27 Jul) excluded from the line.

Travellers moving through a busy streetThe audience

Engagement rate fell from 57.9% to 45.5% — down 12.4 points — even as the crowd grew.

More people arrived, but a smaller share of them engaged. That is the first fingerprint of volume without value: the audience expanded faster than interest in it.

Note: users are summed across channel×day rows for a like-for-like channel comparison, so totals read directionally rather than as de-duplicated uniques.

03Where the growth came from

Winners, losers,
and watch-outs

Paid channels drove almost all the extra traffic. Sorted by year-over-year change in users — the bars tell you who grew; the bubbles tell you whether it was worth it.

Change in users by channel — YoY

Paid Other grew from a tiny base (206 → 5,018 users); its bar is broken to keep the others readable.

Volume vs value Paid Earned / owned

Bubble size = users. The biggest paid bubbles sit along the floor — plenty of people, almost no revenue per user.

Winners

Paid Search scaled the right way — users +144%, revenue +184%, the best conversion rate on the board at 9.15%. Direct grew +45% and stayed the revenue backbone.

Watch-outs

Paid Other and Paid Social added ~8,850 users between them and returned about €100 combined. Reach was bought; revenue wasn't.

A flat lay of a laptop, devices and marketing materialsThe channel mix
04The paradox, measured

We bought reach,
not relationships

Index both against last year and the divergence is stark: the audience grew to 193, revenue held at 94. The extra people simply converted and engaged less.

Audience vs revenue — indexed to 2025 = 100
New vs returning — the mix flipped

A returning-led audience (67%) became a new-led one (73%) in a year — the signature of a paid-acquisition push.

Revenue by channel 2026 2025
▼12ptEngagement rate
79%Paid Other bounce
67%Paid Social bounce

Where revenue rose, it rose on Direct (+26%, now 53% of all revenue), Paid Search (+184%) and Referral (+558% off a small base). Where it fell, it fell hardest on the channels that used to pay the bills — Organic Search and Email.

A hand holding a small cup, seen from aboveValue over volume
05Deep-dive · Organic Search
A laptop and open notebook on a desk Organic Search

The traffic held.
The value left.

Organic Search is the single biggest drag on the year — and the most telling. Its audience barely moved and its engagement stayed healthy. What collapsed was the money.

Revenue
−74%

€34.5k → €8.9k

Revenue per user
€4.59

was €16.05 — a 71% fall

▼10%Users · 2,148 → 1,937
61.1%Engagement rate · was 63.2%
▲1ptConversion rate · 4.5→5.5%

Same visitors. Same engagement. Better conversion rate. Yet a quarter of the revenue. That pattern points away from a traffic problem and toward a value problem — fewer or smaller purchases behind each organic session.

Questions to take back to the data

Did high-value queries shift to paid — or to AI answers that never reach the site?

Is purchase tracking still firing correctly on organic journeys?

06What to do about it

Four moves for
the next 90 days

The audience is here. The job now is to turn reach into revenue — starting where the gap is widest.

01

Rebuild Organic Search value

Traffic and engagement held; monetisation didn't. Chase the ~€25.6k gap first — audit conversion tracking, then high-intent queries.

Biggest single revenue loss of the year.
02

Put paid on a quality diet

Paid Other & Paid Social brought ~8,850 users, ~€100, and 67–79% bounce. Re-target for intent, not impressions.

Most of the new volume; least of the value.
03

Feed Paid Search

The efficient engine: +184% revenue, 9.15% conversion — best on the board. It has room to scale profitably.

Proven return; give it more budget.
04

Protect Direct

€62.7k and 53% of all revenue, up 26%. It's the loyalty base the paid surge is meant to feed — measure whether it does.

The backbone. Don't take it for granted.
The takeaway

Growth in volume isn't growth in value — until you make it so.

Portrait of a person