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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.
Last year a client of ours walked into Black Friday with 307 people already waiting for the offer.
The whole list cost €172 (872 RON). That is €0.56 a lead (2.84 RON).
We ran it for about two weeks and shut it off three weeks before Black Friday.
No discount had been decided yet. No landing page was ready. We just asked people if they wanted to know first.
Simple lead campaign.
Why most SMBs walk into November empty
Nothing gets built in September. Nothing in October.
Then around November 20th the panic starts, the budget goes up, and the ads go live into the most expensive auction of the year.
You are now paying peak CPMs to introduce yourself to strangers.
Two hard jobs stacked on top of each other, at the worst possible price.
Q4 CPMs run about 26% above Q1.
Black Friday week itself hits 2 to 3 times the annual baseline.
So the real question is not how to win the November auction.
It is how much of your work you can finish before it starts.
Why the waitlist is the audience Meta actually wants now
Short version: your interests, lookalikes and age brackets are suggestions.
Meta ignores them the moment it finds someone better.
A lot of people took that to mean audiences stopped mattering.
Wrong conclusion. Interest targeting died.
Data you own did the opposite.
Andromeda leans harder on first-party signal than any Meta system before it, because that is the one input it cannot guess on its own.
So you are not building a fence anymore.
You are building a fuel supply.
A waitlist is the cheapest way for a small brand to manufacture that fuel on demand.
You are not waiting for buyers to pile up.
You go out and buy the “raw signal” while it is still cheap.
The campaign, honestly
One campaign. Lead generation objective.
The creative made one promise.
Get on the list, get the Black Friday offer before everyone else.
That is the whole hook.
Not a discount, because the discount did not exist yet.
Early access is enough.
Two weeks of spend.
Seventeen days, one campaign, and the client entered Black Friday with an audience instead of a cold start.
When to launch
October is the window for most businesses.
Earlier if your buying cycle is long or your product needs explaining, later only if you sell pure impulse.
What matters is that the auction is still quiet in October.
Most advertisers have not switched on their Q4 budgets yet, so you are bidding against normal traffic instead of every ecommerce brand in your country.
Deal intent is already high by then.
People think about Black Friday long before they buy.
Asking someone to raise their hand for a deal costs them nothing, so it is an easy yes.
Cheap supply meeting warm demand.
That window closes in the last week of October.
Prepare now. Launch in October. Never November.
The list pays you three times
This is the part people miss.
One campaign, three assets.
Retargeting during BFCM.
The list becomes a custom audience of people who openly said they want your Black Friday deal.
When CPMs triple in late November, that is who your budget should be talking to first, not strangers.
Email.
Same people, second channel, and this one costs nothing per send.
Your list is the only reach you own that is not being auctioned.
SMS.
For a time-boxed offer, this is the channel with the highest open rate you will ever have.
A waitlist is the one list people actually want a Black Friday text from.
What to do this month
Step 1: Decide nothing about the offer! You do not need the discount to start collecting.
Step 2: Get the form ready and ask for what you will actually use. Email and phone number if you plan to send SMS.
Step 3: Launch one lead campaign in October with one promise, early access to your Black Friday offer. Small budget. This is not a scaling exercise.
Step 4: Build the custom audience in Ads Manager as the list grows, not in November.
Step 5: Two weeks before Black Friday, your offer goes to that audience first, across all three channels, so the campaign exits the learning phase before the auction goes crazy.
Keep it honest.
If you promise early access, actually give it.
A waitlist that gets the same deal as everyone else on the same day is a mailing list with extra steps.
The one truth
Black Friday is not won in November.
It is won in the quiet weeks when nobody is bidding against you.
That list was the cheapest thing that account bought all quarter.
TLDR:
Andromeda ignores interest targeting but leans harder than ever on first-party data, so a waitlist is the strongest audience input a small account can manufacture.
Q4 CPMs run about 26% above Q1 and Black Friday week hits 2 to 3 times baseline, so cold prospecting in November is the most expensive way to meet a buyer.
The list pays three times: BFCM retargeting on Meta, email, and SMS, none of which get auctioned.
Launch in October, promise early access rather than a discount, and collect phone numbers if you plan to text.
P.S. Building your Black Friday creatives? My template pack covers all Black Friday deals too, editable in Canva:
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