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“In a media buying landscape where everything’s more automated than ever, audience targeting has become a lost art. But Proxima has refined the craft. They reminded us just how powerful audiences can be.”
Will Rivas
Media Buyer at Nutrabolt
About
Challenge
After hitting a spend ceiling on Meta, C4 sought a more efficient way to expand its reach
With a strong presence in nutrition shops and grocery stores worldwide, C4 knew it was time to elevate its eCommerce sales channels to maintain its market lead. To achieve this, Will Rivas, Media Buyer at Nutrabolt, turned his focus to Meta ads, knowing they could be a critical driver for customer acquisition.
Will initially pursued a broad campaign strategy, relying on Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC) and constant creative iteration to reach new audiences. However, he found that under this strategy, C4 continuously hit a ceiling where increasing ad spend resulted in ballooning CPAs.
Despite his efforts to diversify C4's ads with new creative, Will didn’t see the profitable returns necessary to justify scaling spend. Having experienced Meta's heyday of lookalikes and interest-based audiences firsthand, Will decided to revisit the long-lost strategy of manual audience targeting. However, after realizing that manually exporting fresh customer lists to use as seed audiences would consume nearly as much time as creative testing, Will needed a solution that would streamline the process on his behalf.
Fortunately, while attending a media buyer summit, he discovered a tool that leveraged real-time first-party data and extensive second-party data to generate boosted seed audiences that could be used to build high-intent lookalikes in mere minutes. Naturally, that tool was Proxima.
"It's tempting to just go with ASC, throw in some creative iteration, and let it rip. But when you hit a certain spend level, you tap out some audiences pretty quickly. Proxima's AI Audiences appealed to us because they were infinitely more scalable."
Will Rivas
Media Buyer at Nutrabolt
Solution
C4 breaks through its spend ceiling and drives incremental reach with AI Audiences
After a turnkey onboarding, the Proxima team conducted a customer base analysis to uncover the traits and purchase behaviors of C4's best customers. Using these findings as a baseline, the Proxima team tapped into its massive dataset of over 65 million shoppers and $17B in purchases across thousands of eCommerce stores to generate predictive AI Audiences, which were seamlessly uploaded to C4's Ads Manager via the Meta API.
Within two weeks of implementing Proxima's AI Audiences, C4 saw double-digit increases in ad performance. This explosive performance out of the gate gave Will the confidence to scale C4's ad spend once more — this time with a considerable budget allocated toward Proxima-powered campaigns.
With Proxima's ability to identify and target new audience pools based on billions of relevant data points (e.g. which stores their customers shop at, their purchase behaviors, AOV), C4’s scaling capabilities have never been more robust.
But what Will loves most about Proxima is the team's bespoke support, which has been readily available throughout the partnership. Not only does the Proxima team continuously deliver custom audiences to C4 (based on the brand’s targeting preferences and experiments), but they also roll up their sleeves and help manage campaigns in Ads Manager. Between shutting off underperforming ads, uploading new audiences, and refreshing creative assets, Will says he has never worked with such a collaborative partner in all his years as a media buyer.
“Proxima’s support since day one has been nothing short of incredible. Their team’s attention to detail and willingness to go the extra mile are traits you don’t see with most vendors.”
Will Rivas
Media Buyer at Nutrabolt
Results
C4 profitably scales MoM ad spend by 50% while reducing CPAs by 20%
Will knew it could be risky to forgo Meta’s “best practice” of going broad with C4’s campaigns. We can’t blame him – after all, most Meta reps will tell you it’s Advantage+ or bust. But, his commitment to experimenting with audience targeting has more than paid off.
Today, Proxima's AI Audiences have become a core pillar of C4's Meta ads strategy — providing low-lift and efficient scaling that wouldn't be possible using Meta’s broad targeting or other audience targeting methods.
And the results speak for themselves:
- 20% reduction in CPA
- 20% increase in ROAS
- 50% increase in MoM ad spend
With C4's audience targeting on autopilot and ad performance cruising, Will is eager to continue expanding the brand's reach on Meta without fear of encountering spend ceilings. The continuous support from Proxima's team of experts has been instrumental in transforming C4's Meta ads strategy into an essential driver of eCommerce growth.
“Proxima acts more like a partner than an external agency — their team is incredibly knowledgeable and eager to help. And I know we’ve only scratched the surface of what they can do for us.”
