Benchmarks are in a league of their own.
In GA4 (and now in Yandex Metrica), there are dedicated interface elements for comparing yourself to "the market." And they certainly don’t come off as minor features. For instance, in GoogleAnalytics, you can choose one of your metrics for comparison, select from a plethora of predefined industries, and see how your numbers stack up against the 25th percentile, 75th percentile, and median of (alleged) competitors.
In YandexMetrica, this even has a separate group of reports, including "Engagement," "Return Rate," and "Traffic Dynamics." Plus, there’s an entire dashboard for "Average Market Indicators" filled with fancy visual metrics.
These context-less comparisons are so pointless that I can quickly think of only two reasons to use such reports:
1. To feed your anxiety.
2. To stroke your ego.
That’s it. Nothing more.
So, why the fuss over such a useless feature? The answer becomes clearer when you realize that this functionality is typically found in applications that are part of an advertising ecosystem.
GA4 has it. Yandex.Metrica has it. Amplitude doesn’t. Mixpanel doesn’t.
Do you use benchmarks in your analytics tools? Remember that old poker saying about identifying the weakest player at the table. Could that be us?
If you work with GA4 to BigQuery exports, be sure to check out my SQL cheat sheet.
