In May 2026, Sweat Pants Agency took over Meta advertising for a DTC pet furniture brand built around a premium seasonal product.
The product carried two structural disadvantages. First, we would be selling a Christmas-oriented product throughout June, July, and August. Second, it was available only for preorder, meaning customers would pay in full months before receiving it.
Either condition can suppress conversion. Together, they are why most brands in this position wait until the fourth quarter to advertise aggressively.
The account we inherited was fragmented across five overlapping campaigns and four countries. Several campaigns were operating below break-even, creative lacked a structured testing system, and the strongest market wasn’t receiving enough budget to compound.
Over the next three months, we rebuilt the account around one central idea: if the calendar won’t create urgency, manufacture it from supply.
By August, ROAS had increased from 3.6 to 6.1 while cost per purchase declined 48%. Monthly spend increased more than fivefold without sacrificing efficiency.
Within the first 20 days of August, the brand generated more revenue than in any previous full month except December.
Results During the First 90 Days
- 3.6 → 6.1 ROAS by August, a 69% increase over the pre-takeover account
- 5.2 blended ROAS across the full engagement
- 48% lower cost per purchase by August
- More than five times as many purchases as the preceding four-and-a-half-month period
- Monthly spend increased more than fivefold
- Second-highest monthly revenue performance in company history, achieved during the off-season
The Challenge: A Seasonal Preorder Spread Across Four Countries
The product was genuinely differentiated, and demand already existed. The brand had repeatedly sold out, including a stockout during the previous peak season that erased nearly an entire month of revenue opportunity.
However, the advertising account wasn’t converting that demand into scalable performance.
Budget was bleeding into losing markets
Five overlapping campaigns divided spend across the United States and three international markets.
Two of the international markets consumed more than 20% of the account’s budget while operating well below break-even. Their combined cost per purchase was more than three times the cost of acquiring a customer in the United States.
Meanwhile, the US campaign—the only market demonstrating consistent traction—wasn’t receiving enough concentrated budget or conversion data to compound effectively.
We were selling against the calendar
Natural demand for a Christmas-oriented product peaks between October and December.
We were buying traffic in June, July, and August, when the category carried almost no built-in urgency. There was no holiday deadline compelling customers to act immediately.
Customers were buying a promise, not an immediately available product
Customers were being asked to make a premium purchase for delivery months later.
That introduced every form of friction normally associated with a preorder:
The account had assets, but not a creative system
Legacy ads ran without a structured understanding of which message, hook, or format was responsible for performance.
When something worked, there was no repeatable process for expanding it. When something failed, there was no clear hypothesis to diagnose.
The account was producing ads, but it wasn’t consistently producing learnings.
The Strategy: Manufacture the Urgency the Calendar Wasn’t Providing
A seasonal product normally sells on a deadline. In August, that deadline didn’t exist, so we built one around a genuine constraint: supply.
1. Concentrate the account around the strongest market
We consolidated the five geo-split campaigns into a single US-focused prospecting campaign.
The two weakest international markets were cut entirely, and their budgets were redeployed behind the market with demonstrated traction.
This accomplished three things:
- Eliminated wasted spend in markets operating below break-even
- Concentrated conversion data inside a larger, cleaner pool
- Created one primary campaign from which we could test and scale
Geographic expansion can be a valuable scaling lever, but only after the primary market is operating efficiently. In this account, international expansion had become a distraction from the strongest opportunity.
2. Make scarcity the primary message
The brand had repeatedly sold out, but that fact wasn’t being used as the central reason to purchase. We changed that.
Instead of treating scarcity as a small badge or secondary line of copy, we led with the brand’s history of selling out. The message gave customers a credible reason to order during the summer rather than wait until the holidays.
The product page was updated to reinforce the same point, ensuring the promise made in the advertisement continued after the click.
Scarcity became the deadline the calendar wasn’t providing.
3. Build creative with direction, not just volume
Every new asset was developed around a specific performance hypothesis. We tested variables including:
Successful concepts were expanded into deliberate variations. Underperforming concepts were cut and evaluated to determine what should change in the next round.
Every new asset could be traced back to a performance signal or strategic question that justified creating it.
The objective wasn’t simply to produce more creative. It was to make every round of creative improve the next one.
4. Isolate winners without destabilizing the account
When an advertisement broke out, we gave it dedicated budget and room to scale.
We avoided unnecessary structural changes to proven campaigns and made measured budget adjustments instead. This protected the performance history of winning ads while allowing us to increase spend progressively.
That discipline helped the account scale monthly spend by more than fivefold without the efficiency collapse that often accompanies aggressive growth.
5. Separate format performance from message performance
Video and static creative were tested separately. This allowed us to distinguish between two very different conclusions: whether the message was working, or whether the format was working.
Static creative ultimately proved to be the more efficient conversion format for this account. That insight could easily have been hidden if static and video assets had been mixed together without a controlled structure.
The Breakthrough: June Was the Trough, Not the Trend
Performance did not improve in a perfectly straight line.
The first full month of scaling produced a 4.2 ROAS. That was only moderately better than the account we inherited, and cost per purchase temporarily climbed as we increased spend and tested new creative.
In isolation, that month could have looked disappointing. But we weren’t optimizing for one attractive reporting period. We were building a testing system capable of compounding.
The following month, ROAS recovered to approximately 5.0 at a higher level of spend.
By August, the account reached a 6.1 ROAS while operating at its highest daily spend rate of the engagement. Cost per purchase simultaneously fell to its lowest level.
Highest spend, highest return, and lowest acquisition cost—all during the same period. That is the signature of a system that is compounding rather than an account benefiting from one lucky month.
Why It Worked
1. Scarcity substituted for seasonality
A seasonal product doesn’t necessarily need the season. It needs a credible deadline. Genuine supply pressure gave summer customers a reason to act immediately instead of waiting until the holidays.
2. One strong market beat four fragmented markets
Concentrating budget in the United States stopped the bleed from markets operating below break-even and gave Meta a larger, cleaner pool of conversion data.
Geographic expansion should be a scaling decision, not a substitute for proving the primary market.
3. Creative volume was paired with direction
We didn’t produce creative indiscriminately. Every asset tested a hypothesis, built on a proven mechanic, or expanded a message that had already demonstrated traction.
That is the difference between producing a lot and learning a lot.
4. Winners were scaled without unnecessary disruption
Rather than repeatedly restructuring the account, we isolated winning ads and adjusted budgets methodically.
This allowed spend to grow substantially while protecting the performance signals that made scaling possible.
5. The advertisement and landing page told the same story
The scarcity message introduced in the advertisement was reinforced on the product page.
Urgency that disappears after the click feels like an advertising tactic. Urgency that continues consistently through the buying experience feels credible. That message-to-page continuity helped turn attention into purchases.
The Outcome
Within approximately three months, the brand:
- Increased ROAS by 69%
- Reduced cost per purchase by 48%
- Increased monthly spend more than fivefold
- Generated more than five times as many purchases as the preceding period
- Produced its second-highest monthly revenue performance during what should have been its weakest season
The result didn’t come from waiting for demand to return. It came from identifying the real constraint, turning that constraint into a compelling reason to act, and building an advertising system capable of learning as it scaled.