Absolutely amazing, everything on time and to a high standard. They have gone above and beyond.
Kayleigh CrowtherGeneral Manager, Creative Carpers
Paid Social case study · Prize competitions
18% More Revenue on 39% Less Ad Spend
How Absolute Digital Media rebuilt a prize competition operator’s Meta account around its weekly competition cycle, growing monthly revenue from £155,838 to £183,309 while cutting monthly ad spend from £11,916 to £7,224. Within three months the account was producing more revenue on considerably less money.
+18%More monthly revenue on 39% less ad spend, Meta-attributed
What did Absolute Digital Media achieve for Creative Carpers?
Absolute Digital Media's Paid Social campaign for Creative Carpers delivered +18% monthly revenue (£155,838 to £183,309, Meta-attributed), −39% monthly ad spend (£11,916 to £7,224), +94% return on ad spend (13.1:1 to 25.4:1, derived from revenue and spend) and +11% monthly purchases (17,964 to 19,982).
The client
A weekly competition cycle in a crowded, closely policed category
Creative Carpers is a Milton Keynes prize competition operator running weekly draws for carp fishing tackle and related prizes, at creative-carpers-giveaways.co.uk.
It runs several competitions a week, each with its own prize, closing date and draw. That cadence is the defining fact of the business and, as it turned out, of the account. It also runs free entry routes alongside paid entries, as UK law requires of any prize competition.
The category is crowded. UK carp competition operators compete for the same specialist audience with near-identical propositions, on platforms that police prize promotions closely. Efficiency is the only durable advantage, because everyone is showing the same tackle to the same anglers.
The results
More revenue on considerably less money
All performance figures are Meta-attributed, from Absolute Digital Media campaign reporting in Meta Ads, comparing month one with month three of the rebuilt account on the same attribution settings, and signed off by the client. Return on ad spend, cost per purchase and average order value are derived from the reported figures.
+18%
Monthly revenue, £155,838 to £183,309, Meta-attributed
−39%
Monthly ad spend, £11,916 to £7,224
+94%
Return on ad spend, 13.1:1 to 25.4:1, derived from revenue and spend
+11%
Monthly purchases, 17,964 to 19,982
The challenge
An account that had grown by accumulation
The strategy
The choices that shaped the rebuild
Audit and clean before adding
Every live campaign was reviewed, overlapping and redundant activity was paused, and the account was rebuilt from a smaller number of clearly separated campaigns. Auditing first is slower to start and faster to finish.
Separate prospecting from remarketing
Cold audiences and warm audiences were split into distinct campaigns across multiple ad sets, each with its own budget, messaging and success measure, so spend could be moved to wherever the return was highest rather than averaged across everything.
Use the weekly competition cycle as the creative calendar
Every new competition became a new creative set. The business already produced the fresh assets that most brands pay heavily to make, and the account was restructured to use them.
Treat free entry as acquisition
Asking a first-time visitor to pay before they have any evidence the draws are real is the most expensive conversion in the category. Letting them enter free first removes the risk from the decision and produces a customer who has already watched a draw take place.
Judge the account on revenue and spend together
Growth funded by budget increases is procurement, not growth. The test of whether an account has improved is whether it produces more on the same money or the same on less, so both figures were reported side by side on the same attribution settings at both ends.
What we delivered
Who ran what
Strategy, account structure and optimisation, led by Tiffany Shears
Tiffany Shears, Senior PPC Manager: account audit, campaign restructure, prospecting and remarketing separation, budget allocation and ongoing optimisation.
An account built around the product rhythm
A weekly competition cycle already produces the fresh creative that defeats fatigue, and most accounts are not structured to use it. Restructuring campaigns so each new competition became a new creative set turned a production cost into the account’s main performance lever.
Clean before adding
Retiring overlapping campaigns removed internal competition for the same audiences, which is where a large part of the spend saving came from, and made every later optimisation decision readable.
The team behind the campaign
Who worked on this account
Tiffany Shears leads the PPC department at Absolute Digital Media, running paid media across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta and TikTok for lead generation and eCommerce clients. She specialises in…
Edwina Lambourdiere is a Senior PPC Account Manager at Absolute Digital Media, running paid media accounts across Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, LinkedIn Ads and Meta Ads for UK and international…
Alex is Head of Content at Absolute Digital Media, overseeing content production and ideation for regulated-sector clients in iGaming, finance, and healthcare. He specialises in creating content that performs reliably…
Shane Fox is Lead Designer at Absolute Digital Media, responsible for the agency’s creative output and for the design of everything a client actually sees: campaign creative, brand systems, landing…
The results
Revenue up, spend down, in the same three months
The figures compare the first month of the rebuilt account with the third. All are Meta-attributed, reported on the same attribution settings at both ends, and signed off by the client. The two derived rows are arithmetic from the reported figures.
Return on ad spend nearly doubled because both halves of the ratio moved the right way at once. Revenue rose while spend fell, which is only possible when the account is buying conversions it was previously paying for twice, through overlapping campaigns, or not buying at all, through fatigued creative that the audience had stopped seeing.
Cost per purchase fell by almost half. Purchases rose more slowly than revenue, so the average order value edged up from £8.68 to £9.17, consistent with warm audiences buying more tickets per visit once they were addressed separately from cold traffic.
£4,692 a month came out of the media budget while revenue rose by £27,471 a month. The client can choose to bank the saving or reinvest it at a return roughly twice what the account was delivering before.
| Measure | Month one | Month three | Change | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly revenue | £155,838 | £183,309 | +18% | Reported |
| Monthly ad spend | £11,916 | £7,224 | −39% | Reported |
| Monthly purchases | 17,964 | 19,982 | +11% | Reported |
| Return on ad spend | 13.1:1 | 25.4:1 | +94% | Derived: revenue divided by spend |
| Cost per purchase | £0.66 | £0.36 | −45% | Derived: spend divided by purchases |
Figures are Meta-attributed, comparing month one of the rebuilt account with month three on the same attribution settings, and signed off by the client. Meta-attributed revenue is the platform’s count of purchases it believes it influenced, so the figure to ask any agency for is which revenue number it is showing you and what it is compared with.
Takeaways
What ecommerce brands with a weekly product cycle should take from this
In their words
What Creative Carpers say
Frequently asked questions
Paid social for prize competitions, answered
How do you increase Facebook ads revenue while cutting spend?
By removing the spend that was not producing anything. Overlapping campaigns bid against each other and fatigued creative is served to people who have stopped responding. Cleaning both out lowers cost before any growth work begins.
Why separate prospecting and remarketing?
Because they have different costs and different jobs. Blended together, the cheap warm conversions hide the expensive cold ones and budget cannot be moved to where it works. Separated, each campaign is judged and funded on its own return.
How do you solve creative fatigue?
By finding the fresh creative the business already produces. A weekly product or offer cycle is a creative calendar. Most accounts ignore it and pay for new assets instead.
Is Meta-attributed revenue reliable?
It is the platform’s count of purchases it believes it influenced. Every figure here is Meta-attributed, says so, and is compared on the same settings at both ends. Ask any agency which revenue figure they are showing you.
How do you measure paid social success?
Against revenue and spend together, never revenue alone. For Creative Carpers the measures were monthly revenue, which rose 18%, and monthly spend, which fell 39%. Either figure on its own describes half of what happened.
More proof
More case studies
Work with us
Does your paid social revenue only rise when your budget does?
If your paid social revenue only rises when your budget does, the conversation worth having is about what your account would produce on less. The same structure is available to any business with a weekly product cycle.
