Creator-UGC pipeline
Seasonal intent moments, not generic UGC
Built a creator pipeline mapped to specific seasonal moments (gift-window, first-cold-snap, peak-purchase week) - UGC creative production keyed to when buyers were actively in-market.
An outdoor brand with one hard selling window and post-iOS in-platform numbers nobody trusted. Spend had to triple across Google Shopping, PMax and Meta prospecting in eight weeks without flying blind on platform-reported ROAS.
The strategic frame every angle traces back to - the villain we name, the mechanism that beats it, and the proof no competitor can copy.
Single peak season + post-iOS platform-reported ROAS nobody trusted - triple spend in 8 weeks or miss the window
Blended MER with geo-holdout as the truth source + creator-UGC pipeline + cross-channel budget allocation
Google captures intent, Meta drives cold prospecting - both judged on MER, not platform attribution
Built a creator pipeline mapped to specific seasonal moments (gift-window, first-cold-snap, peak-purchase week) - UGC creative production keyed to when buyers were actively in-market.
Steered the entire account on blended MER with a geo-holdout test, not on platform ROAS. iOS attribution loss had broken in-platform numbers; geo-holdout gave us the incremental ground truth to allocate budget on.
Google Shopping and PMax captured high-intent purchase below the funnel. Meta prospecting and Demand Gen drove cold awareness above it. Both channels budgeted weekly against the blended MER target, not against platform ROAS in isolation.
Front-loaded prospecting in weeks 1-4 to seed the funnel; protected retention budget in weeks 5-11 once cold acquisition had filled the pipeline. Rebalanced prospecting vs retargeting weekly against contribution margin.
Geo-holdout-measured incremental MER climbed from 2.3 to 3.6 across the 11-week peak season - the cross-channel allocation worked because we judged it on the right number.
Year-over-year peak-season revenue lifted 118% on a tripled spend base - efficiency held because the geo-holdout MER let us scale into the right channels.
Despite tripled spend, prospecting CAC dropped 29% - the UGC pipeline outperformed studio creative on cold reach, and the cross-channel layering reduced channel-on-channel cannibalization.