The situation
A functional coffee subscription brand had rising cost per purchase. New ad concepts weren't producing clear winners.
The team increased creative production, but most new ads received too little delivery to evaluate.
The problem
The same campaign handled creative testing and scaling.
Bidding favored ads with prior conversions. New concepts received too little delivery for a reliable comparison, while two incumbent ads took 30% of spend.
The team couldn't distinguish weak creative from creative that hadn't received enough exposure.
What we did
Separated testing and scaling campaigns so new concepts had planned delivery for evaluation.
Set a minimum delivery level before reviewing each concept's results.
Increased the number of concepts in market after changing the campaign structure.
Moved ads from testing to scaling based on measured results.
The results
Cost per purchase fell from $198 to $169 to $76 across three measurement periods.
Creative volume went from 63 ads on $29.5K to 116 ads on $42.3K, while spend concentration in the top two ads fell from 30% to 16%. Unique click-through rate rose from 1.72% to 2.2%.
At the same $42.3K spend, moving from $198 to $76 per purchase represents about 343 more purchases.