https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog Field notes from DataGlass on profit, pricing, ads, and inventory for Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop sellers. en Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification DataGlass 1440 https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-shopee-ads-bidding-works https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-shopee-ads-bidding-works Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Labs Research Ads How Shopee ads bidding works, derived: GMV Max gives you two boxes — a Target ROAS and a daily budget — and every guide treats them as two levers. They are not. Both collapse into a single threshold on value-to-cost before any bid is placed, only one is binding at a time, and the other is doing nothing at all. Here is the derivation, the three regimes a campaign can be in, and the one-line test that tells you which of your two levers is switched off. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/profit-maximizing-target-roas https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/profit-maximizing-target-roas Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Labs Research Ads Setting your Target ROAS to your break-even ROAS does not protect profit — it targets exactly zero, for every possible volume. The target that maximizes profit is break-even marked up three times: by the demand your ads did not create, by the price your own expansion pays, and by the gap between your average click and your last one. On mid-market parameters those compound to 3.3×, moving the correct target on a 20%-margin product from 5.00 to 16.67. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/shopee-ads-benchmarks-cpc-cpm https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/shopee-ads-benchmarks-cpc-cpm Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Labs Research Data Science Across 333.9 million Shopee impressions and 9.11 million clicks on 80+ Thai shops, the price of a click varies 2.01× by hour of day while the rate at which people click varies 1.14×. CPC ranges THB 3.36 to THB 6.75, CPM ranges THB 89.16 to THB 200.15, and every behavioural input is nearly flat. The full table, the methodology, and the two ways a benchmark like this gets misused. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/ctr-target-roas-cpm-vs-cpc https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/ctr-target-roas-cpm-vs-cpc Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Labs Research Ads Under cost-per-click billing, a better creative is worth nothing to your unit economics — it buys the same clicks from fewer impressions, and your cost per click does not move. Under cost-per-impression billing the same improvement cuts the price of every click by g/(1+g). Five lemmas on the transition, and why click-through rate is the input most marketplace sellers are least prepared to have priced. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/what-is-roas https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/what-is-roas Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Ads ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is sales ÷ ad spend: spend THB 1, get THB 20 of sales back, and your ROAS is 20. But a high ROAS only means a high return per ad baht — not the highest total sales, and not real profit once you subtract COGS, platform fees, payment fees, vouchers, shipping, and returns. Here is what ROAS is, what it hides, and the number sellers should actually watch. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-set-target-roas-gmv-max https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-set-target-roas-gmv-max Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Ads What is Target ROAS? It is the revenue-to-ad-spend ratio Shopee GMV Max optimises toward — and on the Shopee fee schedule effective 4 August 2026, a THB 1,000 product with THB 600 of COGS is left with 7.7% margin before ads, so a Target ROAS of 5 recovers THB 0.39 of contribution per THB 1.00 of ad spend while the campaign reports that it hit its target. What Target ROAS means, how to set it in GMV Max, and the two formulas — break-even ROAS and target-margin ROAS — that protect your margin. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/what-is-ecommerce-optimization https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/what-is-ecommerce-optimization Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Data Science Optimization is not a marketing word — it is an operations-research discipline: use data and math to compute the best decision against an explicit objective. Point it at a Shopee, Lazada, or TikTok Shop store and the objective is true profit, not sales. A primer on why those two numbers stopped moving together, and what optimization actually answers. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/platform-roas-vs-true-roas https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/platform-roas-vs-true-roas Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Ads A ROAS of 5 feels like a win — until you notice the platform computed it on gross attributed sales, before fees, vouchers, shipping, and COGS, and while still counting orders that were later returned or cancelled. The dashboard number is a revenue ratio wearing a profit costume. A primer on what platform ROAS hides and how true ROAS is calculated across Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-increase-shopee-profit-without-more-sales https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-increase-shopee-profit-without-more-sales Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Profit The median gap between COGS refreshes on a top-50 Shopee catalogue is 87 days, and over that window supplier and packaging drift alone compresses contribution margin by 1.5–3.0 percentage points. The eight supply-side cost lines that compound against Shopee margin between audits, ranked by recoverable magnitude, with the review cadence that holds each one. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-sell-more-on-shopee https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-sell-more-on-shopee Fri, 08 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Ads The standard Shopee growth advice — discount harder, scale ad budget, opt into every campaign — works against the operator at scale. A research note on the lever order that actually compounds Shopee revenue, and the metric that tells you whether the lift was earned or bought. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/price-elasticity-modeling-shopee-lazada-tiktok-shop https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/price-elasticity-modeling-shopee-lazada-tiktok-shop Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Labs Research Pricing A practical guide from DataGlass Labs Research on the most under-used lever in Southeast Asian e-commerce: knowing how customers actually respond to price changes. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/shopee-optimization-in-2026 https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/shopee-optimization-in-2026 Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Operations The popular "10 ways to optimize your Shopee shop" advice optimises the wrong objective. The lever that actually moves margin is the tightness of the diagnose → decide → operate loop — and most checklists skip the diagnose stage entirely. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/southeast-asia-seller-market-research-2026 https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/southeast-asia-seller-market-research-2026 Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Landscape Market growth has resumed; seller economics have become more exacting. Southeast Asia's platform e-commerce reached US$157.6B in 2025 (up 22.8% YoY), top-three platforms now control about 98.8% of platform GMV, and content commerce accounts for ~32% of platform GMV. The 2026 question for sellers is no longer "how big is the market?" — it is "who controls the decision loop?" https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/shopee-fee-structure-2026 https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/shopee-fee-structure-2026 Sun, 03 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Operations Most 'Shopee fees' explainers stop at commission and transaction fee. The four layers underneath — voucher co-funding, Free Shipping Program subsidy, Mall premium, payment-channel pass-through — are where the gap between dashboard revenue and bank deposit actually lives. With a sourced layer-by-layer breakdown, the four-term commission-per-order formula, two worked THB examples, a sensitivity table, and the reconciliation procedure. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/cross-platform-ad-budget-allocation https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/cross-platform-ad-budget-allocation Wed, 29 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Ads Most multi-platform sellers split ad budget across Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok Shop by historical revenue share. The math says that's wrong. Optimal allocation equalises marginal ROAS, not historical share — and the gap between the two on a typical account is 4–7 percentage points of net contribution margin per quarter. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-increase-profit-on-shopee https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-increase-profit-on-shopee Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Ads A Shopee account moving its monthly ad budget from THB 40,000 to THB 100,000 commonly grows revenue 60% and loses a third of its net profit — and not one decision in that sequence looks wrong on the dashboard. The arithmetic of the scaling trap, why platform-reported ROAS is blind to it by construction, and the per-SKU break-even bar that stops it. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-increase-profit-on-lazada https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-increase-profit-on-lazada Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Profit The LazMall badge lifts conversion. It also raises commission, mandates free-shipping subsidies, and pulls the price ceiling down through the platform's own competitive-parity rules. Whether the badge pays is a per-SKU question. A research note on the LazMall economics, why Sponsored Discovery leaks more margin than Sponsored Search, and the audit that recovers 4–6 percentage points of margin in 30 days. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-reduce-shopee-ad-waste https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-reduce-shopee-ad-waste Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Ads On a typical Shopee account, 20–30% of ad spend runs at a structural loss the platform dashboard ranks as winning campaigns. Pausing "underperformers" misses the leak. A research note on the two structural defaults that cause hidden ad waste — and the audit that surfaces it without losing revenue. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-calculate-shopee-seller-margin https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-calculate-shopee-seller-margin Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Profit The math, the inputs, and the program-specific traps. Why Shopee's in-dashboard income view almost always overstates margin — and how to reconstruct true contribution margin per SKU using the order-line data Shopee already exposes via Open Platform. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-calculate-lazada-seller-margin https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-calculate-lazada-seller-margin Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Profit The math, the inputs, and the program-specific traps. Why Lazada's in-platform P&L summary almost always overstates margin — and how to reconstruct true contribution margin per SKU using the order-line data Lazada exposes via the Open Platform. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-calculate-true-shopee-roas https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-calculate-true-shopee-roas Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Ads A methodology note. Shopee's in-platform ROAS is gross-revenue based and structurally biased toward overspend at scale. True ROAS is the same formula with one input substituted — and that substitution flips winners into losses on roughly half the typical Shopee catalog. With charts, three SKU profiles, sensitivity analysis, and the operating procedure that applies the substitution at production cadence. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-reduce-lazada-ad-waste https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-reduce-lazada-ad-waste Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Ads Lazada runs two structurally different ad products — Sponsored Search and Sponsored Discovery — with break-even economics that diverge by ~1.4–1.8× in true-ROAS terms. A single account-wide ROAS target misjudges both. A research note on the audit that surfaces the structural waste, the pruning order that recovers margin without losing revenue, and the per-placement framework that survives Pay Day and 11.11. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-find-low-margin-skus-on-shopee https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-find-low-margin-skus-on-shopee Thu, 12 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Profit On a typical Shopee account, the top-10 SKUs by revenue and the top-10 by contribution profit overlap by roughly 50%. Half of every shop's bestsellers are not the most profitable products. A research note on the audit that surfaces the gap, the patterns hiding inside it, and the per-SKU operating decisions that recover margin. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-plan-lazada-campaigns-around-profit https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-plan-lazada-campaigns-around-profit Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Pricing Pay Day, Mega Sale, 11.11, and the long tail of category windows make participation feel mandatory. The platform documents the eligibility tiers; the seller absorbs them. A research note on what each campaign actually costs, when participation pays, and the margin-first rubric that survives all three. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-increase-profit-on-tiktok-shop https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-to-increase-profit-on-tiktok-shop Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Profit TikTok Shop is the only SEA marketplace with a stacked second commission — affiliate commission (10–25% via the Open Affiliate Plan) layered on top of platform commission. A 6.0 platform ROAS routinely becomes ~1.4 true ROAS once the full four-line cost stack is subtracted. A research note on the affiliate-stack arithmetic, live-stream pricing discipline, and the per-SKU framework that recovers margin without retreating from the platform. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/sea-marketplace-2026 https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/sea-marketplace-2026 Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Landscape Eighteen distinct platform-market cells, six countries, three platforms, and roughly a million sellers competing on a saturated product surface. The aggregate is growing; the per-cell margin distribution is compressing. A research note on the structural shifts and the operating rule that survives them. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/data-ingestion-for-shopee-sellers https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/data-ingestion-for-shopee-sellers Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Data Science Most Shopee sellers don't have a strategy problem first. They have a data plumbing problem — orders, ads, COGS, fees, vouchers, inventory, pricing, and returns live in seven different surfaces, and by the time the seller has stitched them together the campaign is over. A research note on the data-source matrix, the canonical-entity model, and the zero-setup architecture that recovers ~10 hours per week. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/race-to-zero-margin https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/race-to-zero-margin Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Competition Read the platform documentation end-to-end and the conclusion is uncomfortable: the discounts buyers see, the free shipping that drives conversion, and the affiliate spend that drives reach are all paid by the seller. The race-to-zero is the equilibrium output of that design. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/ml-demand-forecasting-for-ecommerce https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/ml-demand-forecasting-for-ecommerce Wed, 04 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Data Science Machine learning in e-commerce gets discussed in vague terms; for marketplace sellers the operating question is concrete — how many units of this SKU will sell in the next N days, with what confidence, and what decision flows from the answer? A research note on the practical model architecture, the stockout-distortion problem, sensitivity analysis, and the operating decisions forecasts feed. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/complexity-is-the-tax https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/complexity-is-the-tax Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Complexity A multi-shop seller in 2026 logs into seven platforms, reconciles four fee schedules, exports six CSVs, and re-enters COGS by hand. Big brands absorb the cost with a data team. Small sellers absorb it with their evenings — and it's the single biggest reason multi-shop operators stall before they reach scale. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/inventory-stockout-math-ecommerce https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/inventory-stockout-math-ecommerce Sun, 18 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Operations A stockout is not one cost; it is five compounding costs. Lost contribution profit on the missed unit, plus wasted ad spend during the stockout window, plus algorithmic ranking demotion, plus repeat-buyer trust erosion, plus distorted forecasting that increases the likelihood of the next stockout. A research note on the multi-line stockout cost function, the per-SKU reorder-point math that accounts for it, and the campaign-aware adjustment that survives Pay Day and 11.11. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/dynamic-pricing-ecommerce-marketplaces https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/dynamic-pricing-ecommerce-marketplaces Sun, 04 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Pricing Discounting is easy. Profitable pricing is hard. A 30% volume lift on a 10% price cut routinely lowers total contribution profit — the math says volume must lift by ~33% just to break even, and most SKUs underperform that bar. A research note on the price-elasticity arithmetic, the inventory × demand four-quadrant framework, and the per-SKU pricing decision that survives campaign-window pressure. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-ecommerce-decision-engines-work https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/how-ecommerce-decision-engines-work Fri, 12 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Data Science A dashboard tells you what happened. A decision engine tells you what to do next, ranks the options by projected profit lift, and surfaces the math behind every recommendation. A research note on the five-layer architecture that separates the two, why marketplace commerce now requires the latter, and where the operating model breaks. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/multi-shop-analytics-lazada-shopee-tiktok https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/multi-shop-analytics-lazada-shopee-tiktok Wed, 26 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Operations Modern marketplace sellers rarely operate on one channel. They have multiple dashboards but not one operating view. They know sales by channel — but not profit by channel. https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/new-competitive-world-of-commerce https://www.dataglasslabs.com/blog/new-competitive-world-of-commerce Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000 DataGlass Research Landscape A research note on what changed in marketplace commerce between 2022 and 2026. Platforms became active algorithmic counterparties; sellers who treat them as passive listing markets are competing against optimization systems they cannot see. The fix is to run your own optimization layer on top.