UK Carp Tech runs prize competitions for carp anglers on platforms that police the category closely. Absolute Digital Media built a full-funnel Facebook and Instagram programme around owned audiences, so the growth came from the account performing better on roughly a fifth more budget rather than from buying more media.
Absolute Digital Media's Paid Social campaign for UK Carp Tech delivered +733% Meta revenue year on year, +598% return on ad spend year on year, +1,025% purchases year on year and +19% media spend (derived from revenue and return).
UK Carp Tech is an online prize competition platform giving carp anglers the chance to win premium fishing tackle through regular draws, operating at ukcarptech.com.
The business runs live draws several times a week, publishes its winners and holds an excellent Trustpilot rating across several hundred reviews. It also runs free-entry competitions and giveaways alongside paid entries, which is a legal requirement as much as a marketing choice: under the Gambling Act 2005, a paid competition with no free entry route is a lottery, and the CAP Code governs how prize promotions can be advertised.
It sits in a niche with an unusually engaged audience. Carp angling is a specialist hobby with strong community identity, which makes the addressable market small and the people in it far more responsive than a general ecommerce audience. UK Carp Tech has worked with Absolute Digital Media for around three years.
Performance movements compare one year of the engagement with the year before it and are reported as Meta-attributed figures on the same attribution settings at both ends; absolute revenue, spend and purchase counts are not published for this account. The two derived rows (media spend roughly +19% and average order value roughly −26%) are arithmetic from the reported movements and assume all three are measured over the same period on the same basis. There is no third-party index for paid social comparable to those used on the search pages, so no external corroboration is claimed.
Integrated Agency of the Year - SilverEuropean Agency Awards 2026
Best Use of Search B2C (PPC) Small (The Swallow Co.)European Search Awards 2026
Standout B2C Ecommerce Website of the Year (Stelrad)UK Digital Excellence Awards 2026
Best Integrated Paid Media CampaignUK Paid Media Awards 2026
Best New Business CampaignUK Agency Awards 2025
Best Use Of Search (Retail/Ecommerce) - SEOUK Search Awards 2024Integrated Agency of the Year - SilverEuropean Agency Awards 2026Best Use of Search B2C (PPC) Small (The Swallow Co.)European Search Awards 2026Standout B2C Ecommerce Website of the Year (Stelrad)UK Digital Excellence Awards 2026Best Integrated Paid Media CampaignUK Paid Media Awards 2026Best New Business CampaignUK Agency Awards 2025Best Use Of Search (Retail/Ecommerce) - SEOUK Search Awards 2024 
Every UK prize competition has to offer free entry alongside paid entry. Rather than treating that as a compliance formality with no data capture attached, bespoke landing pages were built for free-to-enter competitions with email capture integrated directly, turning entries into a continuously growing marketing list. The free entry route is the cheapest qualified lead source available to any operator in this category, and most treat it as a cost of doing business rather than as an acquisition channel.
A page growth campaign was launched with a discount incentive, deliberately building community size and warming a retargeting audience ahead of the periods when conversion campaigns would need one. Spending the entire budget on direct conversion campaigns would have meant prospecting to cold audiences at scale, which is the most expensive way to buy a sale; a warm pool built cheaply in advance reduces the cost of every conversion campaign that follows it.
Campaigns were built separately for cold audiences, warm engagers, email subscribers, website visitors and previous purchasers, with messaging matched to each stage rather than a single creative set distributed across all of them. Angling interest targeting reaches the right hobby and tells you nothing about whether the person has heard of the brand, which means a first-time viewer and a repeat customer would receive the same ad.
Creative combined prize stills with winner testimonials and clear closing dates. Showing real winners does work that a product photograph cannot, because the objection in this category is whether the draws are genuine. Every operator shows the same tackle from the same manufacturers, and the prize is the one thing that does not differentiate you.
Tiffany audited the account, mapped the existing audiences, designed the five-stage relationship structure from cold audiences through to previous purchasers, sequenced the three phases so assets were built before spend was scaled, and ran the continuous creative and targeting testing that scaled the top-performing ad sets through the summer peaks.
Proof-led creative combining prize stills, winner testimonials and closing dates across the five audience stages, and the free-entry competition landing pages with email capture integrated, which turned a legal requirement into the top of the funnel.
Email list and remarketing pools the business can reach directly, which in a category subject to platform policy changes is worth more than any single year of performance.
Audit, CRM setup and audience mapping; then creative, landing pages and the page growth campaign; then continuous testing and scaling. The sequencing is why the scaling worked when it happened.
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…
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…
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…
Revenue rose 733% year on year, return on ad spend rose 598% and purchases rose 1,025%.
The derived spend row is the whole result. Revenue grew more than eightfold while return on ad spend grew nearly sevenfold, which means media budget rose by roughly a fifth across the same period. An eightfold revenue increase bought with an eightfold budget increase is a media plan. An eightfold revenue increase on a fifth more budget is a rebuilt account.
Purchases rose faster than revenue, so the average order fell by roughly a quarter. That reflects the entry-level pricing of competition tickets and a customer base buying more frequently rather than in larger amounts, which is the behaviour the relationship-stage segmentation was built to produce: previous purchasers and email subscribers were reached with their own messaging and came back for the next draw. Cost per result improved, most noticeably through the summer peak. Alongside the commercial figures, the programme built assets the business owns outright.
| Measure | Reported | Multiple | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta revenue | +733% | 8.3x | Reported |
| Return on ad spend | +598% | 7.0x | Reported |
| Purchases | +1,025% | 11.3x | Reported |
| Media spend | roughly +19% | 1.19x | Derived: revenue ÷ return on ad spend |
| Average order value | roughly −26% | 0.74x | Derived: revenue ÷ purchases |
Figures are Meta-attributed, compared year on year on the same attribution settings. Platform-attributed revenue is the platform’s count of purchases it believes it influenced within its attribution window and can overstate what the ads alone produced; the check that matters is whether the business’s own revenue moved the same way, and for UK Carp Tech it did.
Myself and Roy are delighted with the results the Absolute team have generated for us over the past couple of years. Despite the various challenges presented by Facebook, they've continued to stay on the pulse, pushing the business in the right direction.
By improving what the budget buys. UK Carp Tech’s Meta revenue rose 733% year on year while return on ad spend rose 598%, which means media spend rose by roughly a fifth. Building warm audiences in advance, segmenting by relationship stage and testing creative continuously reduces the cost of every conversion the account produces.
They are one of the most efficient lead sources available. A UK prize competition has to offer a free entry route to stay outside gambling law, so every operator already runs one. Building dedicated landing pages with email capture behind it turns a legal requirement into a growing owned audience, which then reduces acquisition costs across every paid campaign that follows.
By relationship stage rather than demographic or interest. Cold audiences, warm engagers, email subscribers, site visitors and previous purchasers each need different messaging, and interest targeting alone cannot distinguish between them. Running one creative set across all five is the most common cause of poor social performance.
When it builds an audience you will convert later, yes. A likes campaign with a discount incentive grows community size cheaply and warms a retargeting pool ahead of the periods when conversion campaigns need one, which lowers the cost of those campaigns considerably.
Proof rather than prizes. Every operator shows the same tackle from the same manufacturers, so the prize does not differentiate. Winner testimonials address the actual objection a first-time entrant has, which is whether the draws are genuine, and they consistently outperform product-led creative.
By converting rented audiences into owned ones continuously. Email lists and first-party data are the only audiences a platform policy change cannot remove, and the time to build them is while delivery is stable rather than after it is not.
It is the platform’s count of purchases it believes it influenced, within its attribution window, and it can overstate what the ads alone produced. The figures on this page are Meta-attributed and are reported as year-on-year movements on the same attribution settings, so the comparison is like for like even where the absolute level is not. The check that matters is whether the business’s own revenue moved the same way, and for UK Carp Tech it did.
Against revenue and return on ad spend together, never reach or engagement. For UK Carp Tech the measures were Meta revenue, which rose 733% year on year, and return on ad spend, which rose 598%. Reach describes how many people saw an ad. Neither figure describes whether it worked.
If your paid social is growing only when you increase the budget, the conversation worth having is about which audiences you own outright and which ones you are renting.
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