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Blu Dot surpasses 2,000% ROAS with self-serve CTV ads
Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:
After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.
The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.
“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”
Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.
Most Black Friday plans start with one question: how much off?
That is the wrong first question.
The right one: who do I want to buy from me for the first time this month?
Why a sitewide discount buys the wrong customer
The offer is your targeting.
A price-led offer attracts people who shop on price.
They buy once, wait for the next sale, and you paid peak CPMs to get them.
A sitewide discount also goes to every customer you already have.
People who would have paid full price now pay less, so a "record November" can leave you with less profit than a normal one.
In DAS #132 I covered the audience side.
This issue is about the offer.
What Black Friday is actually for
You are not clearing stock for one week.
You are buying first orders at the price the auction sets.
So buy the first order you actually want:
a customer who starts where your best customers ended up after three purchases.
That is the mindset.
Now the mechanics.
How to find the bundle your best customers already built
Your best customers already show you the offer.
You just have not read it yet.
Step 1: Export your orders for the last 24 months.
Strip names, emails, phone numbers and addresses first (GDPR). Keep customer ID, order date, product and price.
Step 2: Give the file to an AI assistant with this prompt:
Here is my order export. Find the customers whose total spend is at least 30% above average. For each, list the first, second and third product they bought. Show me the three most common paths.
Step 3: Take the most common path and pack it into one offer.
Build it around the customer's problem, with faster delivery, a gift option or the accessory they always add later.
Not just a lower price.
The AI reads a spreadsheet.
Two things to know.
First: with a small customer base, the pattern can be noise, so treat it as a hypothesis.
Second: check the bundle against its real margin, because a bundle that looks great on revenue can sit below break-even ROAS.
Why you test the bundle in October
Take Romania, for example.
eMAG, the Amazon of Romania, runs Black Friday on November 6 this year.
Many other retailers line up with it, so by then the market is loud and your ads compete with all of them.
That means your Black Friday offer has to be proven before that date.
Test the bundle in October, as a Fall Promo.
Run it like any normal offer: small budget, one bundle, three ads.
Watch who buys it and what they buy next.
If it works, it becomes your Black Friday offer.
If it does not, you found out while the auction was still quiet.
Not in Romania?
Find the retailer that sets the date in your market and count back from there.
On the day itself, email and SMS carry the offer.
Many buyers have already decided where to shop by then, so keep ads small and on warm audiences, and do not switch them off if your list is tiny.
What to do after Black Friday
This is where most plans stop.
It is also where the money is. And most SMBs miss out on it.
December.
Your Black Friday buyers are your best audience now.
Email them the second product from the path you found, and retarget them with it.
Stop pushing for new buyers once the last shipping date gets close.
A gift that arrives late becomes a refund.
Late December to January.
Many big advertisers have spent their Q4 budget by then, so the auction is often quieter.
Check your own account first: compare last January's CPM with last October's before you bet on it.
If it holds, run the same bundle again, this time for people buying for themselves.
February and March.
Attention gets expensive and demand is weak.
Do not scale, protect your margin and sell the second order to the people Black Friday gave you.
How to know it worked
Compare your Black Friday buyers with your other buyers 90 days later.
Look at repeat rate and order value.
If they are not clearly better, the offer did not do its job.
The ROAS on your Black Friday retargeting will look great either way, because it also counts sales that email or direct would have made anyway.
How to think about Black Friday
Do not plan a Black Friday campaign. Plan a Black Friday decision.
Which customer do I want to start with, what should they buy second, and what are they worth in March?
Answer that first. The ads are the easy part.
Want to check your bundle's margin before you launch? The profit planner is in the free skill pack at digitaladsnack.com/meta-ads-claude-code-skills.
TLDR:
Offer picks the customer. Sitewide discount buys bargain hunters.
Bundle comes from your order export. AI reads the file, never the ad account.
Test it in October as a Fall Promo. Then: second order in December, check January CPM, hold margin in February.
Plan a Black Friday decision, not a campaign.
DAS is also sponsored by:
A deal has two sides. Your stack only sees one.
Aligned shows you the other half. See what buyers actually do between meeting. See what they open, revisit, and share; so you know the exact next step to move things forward. And your champion gets everything they need to win internally when you're not in the room.
♥️ Tools we love to use at my agency:
My ultimate list of FREE Ad Libraries for spying and inspiration
Get my FREE Facebook Ads Hook Library and make it yours.
Email Marketing tools for e-commerce Klaviyo and for leads Mailerlite. We choose the one that fits our client’s needs between these two.
Best Pop-up Tool for e-commerce to grow your email list: Optimonk
For Project Management we use Nifty.
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