$1.1M/month to $2.7M/month in 90 days
What you will learn from this case study...
- How to break through an ad spend ceiling profitably
- How to go from existing winners into new formats by investing in higher production creatives.
- How to find a repeatable system that doubles down on winning ads.
Stage 1: Baseline (Feb-March 2024)
The Challenge
Our client had already achieved solid results, with monthly revenue of $1.1M and a monthly ad spend of over $500k. They were primarily using User-Generated Content (UGC) ads, which performed well initially. However, the market became saturated as competitors adopted the similar formats, leading to ad fatigue and stagnation in performance.
Key Metrics Before Our Intervention:
- Average Monthly Ad Spend: $521,486.52
- Average Monthly Revenue: $1,183,972.84
- Average ROAS: 2.27
- Ad Fatigue Due to Market Saturation: Increasing
- AVG Hook Rate: 28.27%
- AVG Hold Rate: 19.07%
Stage 2: The First Batch of Creatives (April-May 2024)
The Strategy
To break through the ad spend ceiling, we first conducted extensive customer and competitor research. The goal was to identify untapped messaging angles and creative formats that would stand out in a saturated market. We shifted the focus from generic UGC ads to more other formats that directly addressed competitors' weaknesses and spoke to solution-aware customers.
The Turning Point
We tested multiple creatives, but one ad—“340”—emerged as the best performer. This ad capitalized on pain points we discovered in our competitor research and featured a strong hook that captured the attention of our target audience. By the end of May, our street interview ad became the top spender, increasing our client’s monthly revenue by 19%.
Throughout May, our street interview ad became the highest-spending creative in the account and had amazing creative metrics (hook & hold rate).
This ad became the highest spender for the month of May, so we decided to focus on more ads with similar angles and formats. By the end of May, monthly revenue increased by 19%, from $1.1M to $1.4M.
Stage 3: Stealth Creatives = Scale (June 2024)
In June, we doubled our creative output and introduced stealth creatives—ads designed to blend into your customer's feed.
These included street interviews and skit conversations, which didn’t immediately look like ads.
The stealth aspect was key: by the time viewers realized they were watching an ad, they were already hooked with the story, humor, or pain points addressed by the actors.
No other competitors in the space were testing formats like these, which gave us a significant advantage. The results speak for themselves:
Key Results by the End of June:
- Ad Spend: $1,032,048.22
- Revenue (Purchases Conversion Value): $2,405,165.65
- ROAS: 2.33
- Hook Rate: 43%
- Hold Rate: 34%
Stage 4: Podcast Ads and Final Results (July 2024)
Final Push with Podcast Ads
In July, we introduced a new format—podcast-style ads. These ads outperformed even our most successful street interviews and skit conversations. They capitalized on a unique combination of authority and high-quality production, and quickly became the top spenders in the ad account.
By the end of July, we had more than doubled our client's monthly revenue, taking it from $1.1M to $2.7M. Our creative strategy—focused on testing new angles, doubling down on winning messaging, and stealth creatives—resulted in our ads becoming the top three highest-spending ads in the account's history:
Final Results by the End of July:
- Monthly Revenue: $2.7M
- Ad Spend: $1.15M
- ROAS: 2.31
- Key Creative Formats: Podcast ads, Street interviews, Skit conversations
- Top 3 Highest-Spending Ads in Account History
Key Takeaways
The 3 strategies that helped us scale our client were:
- Testing varied angles and messaging to avoid ad fatigue and break through ad ceilings.
- Set up a system that analyzes data from existing creatives on a weekly basis
- Double down on messaging proven to work with less saturated formats (stealth creatives)
Every brand is testing UGC.
Consumers are becoming less sensitized to them.
Meaning, brands are saturating the market, rising your costs
of making these and making it easier to reach ad fatigue.
If you want to scale, you need stealth creative formats.
Ready to break through your level of ad spend?
Then book a call with us.
We'll give you the exact angles, creators and script structures we would use to scale your brand (for free).
I'll also let you know which stealth creative formats would work in your niche.
Find a time that works for you here: