This brand had long relied on paid search and industry-specific outreach but was reaching the ceiling of those channels. They needed to diversify their ad mix and engage a fragmented audience: people who weren’t scrolling Instagram or TikTok, but who were actively browsing the open web. The brand needed a new way to engage their audience where they actually spend time, without wasting budget on irrelevant impressions.
What We Needed to Achieve 1. Generate a steady stream of qualified B2B leads for high-ticket products 2. Maintain a cost-effective CPL benchmark while scaling spend 3. Expand reach into untapped audience segments not accessible via traditional paid social or search 4. Validate programmatic as a viable acquisition channel for B2B
We developed a Display-focused programmatic campaign designed to reach the brand’s ideal customers across the open web. While Display is known for its scalability, it also has a reputation for inefficiency. To protect performance, we ramped up spend gradually while actively excluding underperforming placements. This allowed us to isolate and scale only the highest-performing publisher inventory.
How We Did It 1. Precision-Gated Display Rollout – We launched campaigns gradually, monitoring site-level data and building a robust exclusion list to eliminate waste and improve CPL before scaling. 2. Creative Repurposing for Display – The client supplied a handful of high-performing static Meta ads. We transformed these into a complete suite of compliant Display creatives across all required sizes, optimized for clarity and click-through. 3. Contextual Targeting – We leveraged contextual and interest-based targeting to reach prospects within relevant content environments, allowing us to explicitly target their core audience on an untapped channel.
The campaign drove exceptional results: CPL came in 80% lower than the client’s breakeven target, giving them significant headroom and early confidence in Display as a long-term performance channel. Additionally, Google Analytics tracking revealed a corresponding lift in conversions across all relevant sources during the campaign, indicating that our pixel tracking and attribution methodology was able to report on conversions accurately.
By applying disciplined optimization tactics to Display (a channel often dismissed as inefficient) we proved that even in B2B, programmatic can be a powerful, scalable growth lever. We helped the client reach and convert new buyers they couldn’t access through social or search, reaffirming our belief that the next phase of growth doesn’t live within the duopoly. It lives on the other side.
