Scaling CTV: 5x New Buyer Growth & Proven Incremental Impact
Introduction
Zenni Optical, a longtime Keynes Digital partner, entered a phase of accelerated growth with a renewed focus: scale media investment while preserving efficiency. With Connected TV (CTV) already serving as a foundational channel, the objective shifted to driving higher volumes of qualified traffic, expanding first-time buyer acquisition, and outperforming strict ROAS benchmarks through a smarter, data-led strategy.
The Challenge
While return on ad spend remained a key performance indicator, Zenni increasingly prioritized net new customer acquisition, a KPI essential to long-term business growth. The challenge was to aggressively ramp media investment while ensuring sustained efficiency and delivering incremental, high-quality traffic.
The Approach
Keynes evolved Zenni’s established CTV program into a scalable performance engine by focusing on:
- Significant spend acceleration beginning in September, aligned with peak performance windows, sustaining ROAS performance while unlocking compounding growth in first-time buyer acquisition.
- Audience refinement and strategic testing, including interest-based segments (e.g., golf enthusiasts) and high-intent demographic cohorts such as females 50+, identified through real-time performance signals.
- Cross-channel synergy, leveraging CTV to enhance conversion behavior across search, social, email, and affiliate channels.
- Creative strategy anchored in performance storytelling, with premium inventory placements (e.g., GOLFPASS, CBS Sports) ensuring contextual alignment and platform relevance, while testing into key sports moments like The Masters and NFL/NBA seasons to align with ambassador activity and reinforce broader brand initiatives.
The Execution
Campaign activations included:
- Scaling CTV across U.S. and Canadian markets, deploying tailored strategies for both BAU and lapsed customer cohorts.
- Fueling the rollout of high-performing OLV campaigns, with CTV audience insights directly informing targeting and creative execution, further validating the strength of the overall data-driven strategy.
- Executing a six-week incrementality test across a set of test and control geographies to isolate CTV’s influence on customer acquisition and total order efficiency. This structured approach provided clear, actionable insights and confirmed CTV’s ability to drive profitable orders at scale.
The Results
As investment scaled, Zenni’s performance outcomes exceeded expectations:
Independent incrementality testing demonstrated that CTV drove efficient, profitable total order performance in test markets compared to control. The analysis confirmed meaningful incremental impact from CTV-attributed orders, reinforcing the channel’s role as a powerful growth driver.
ROAS consistently outperformed efficiency benchmarks, even as spend increased substantially.
More than 5x growth in new customer contribution. Keynes’ share of total new customer acquisitions climbed from just 2% early on to over 11% within a year.
Cross-channel lift driven by CTV exposure, with improvements including:
Highly efficient conversion paths, with campaigns averaging just 3.5 impressions before conversion and demonstrating strong time-to-purchase velocity.
Why It Stands Out
This wasn’t about testing a new channel, it was about scaling a proven foundation with strategic precision. By integrating smarter targeting, cross-channel coordination, outcome-based creative, and rigorous incrementality testing, Keynes helped Zenni elevate CTV from a foundational channel to a core engine of efficient, measurable, and sustainable growth.
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