The situation
A ready-to-drink coffee brand sold direct to consumers and through retail. Paid social drove most new-customer acquisition.
Acquisition cost rose while creative, audiences, budgets, and offers stayed the same. The team began a creative-fatigue review.
The problem
The ad platform had rerouted a share of delivery from the brand's site to its on-platform shop. The team hadn't chosen the new destination.
The destination change sent traffic through a different funnel. It didn't appear in the ad-level report the team used to review creative performance.
What we did
Compared acquisition cost with destination mix instead of creative metrics.
Measured the share of delivery sent to on-platform shop destinations.
Restored delivery to the brand's site.
Added destination mix to the daily review so another routing change can be found sooner.
The results
Correcting the destination cut sitewide acquisition cost 17.4% in one month, from $54.79 to $45.25. Paid social CPA landed at $45.32.
At 2,290 new customers a month, sustaining that $9.54 cost difference represents about $262,000 in modeled annual value.
The cost improvement required no new creative, budget, or audience.