Otrium ran a Power Lift Study with Hunch resulting in a 366k brand lift
Fishing in the same pond made Otrium to rethink conversion-only campaigns
During the Q4 campaign restructuring Otrium wanted to test a slightly different approach, moving away from campaigns that were solely focused on conversion. At that point, their strategy was laser-focused on sales, using Meta’s algorithms to target the people most likely to purchase.
"However, the big question was whether we could boost not only sales but also how people feel about Otrium. It all started when I joined Otrium and ran an incremental reach analysis. I saw that we were only optimizing campaigns toward sales - a conversion objective. We were basically fishing in the same pond because telling the algorithms to target people who are more likely to convert kind of limits the audience." explains Rocio Villares, Senior Paid Social Manager at Otrium.
The incremental reach - the reach coming from people who hadn't seen or received an impression from Otrium’s ads - was only 11%. This indicates that the audience share was quite low.
“Then suddenly, when we included brand awareness in December, we saw an incremental lift increase to 33%. Somehow, once we started running brand awareness campaigns, there was a noticeable shift in the audience we were reaching and those exposed to Otrium’s ads. That was the turning point.
With this analysis, we wanted to prove that this was working. We also wanted to show the broader team that including brand awareness can improve brand perception, increase sales in the long term, and reveal how well-known Otrium is.” - says Rocio.
The volume of reach in the Netherlands was low throughout the year. Except in February and March where they saw a higher volume due to an investment in campaigns optimising towards reach (Awareness campaign). They saw low incremental reach percentages last year due to high monthly budgets allocated in bottom funnel objectives only. This approach led to overexposure to the same customer base.
The team needed to answer a bigger strategic question: If they added an upper-funnel brand awareness layer to their Meta strategy, could they expand their reach and not only drive more sales but also improve how people feel about Otrium?
The challenge wasn’t just proving this hypothesis internally, it was also about shifting mindsets. Otrium needed a clear, data-backed way to show that performance marketing could be more than just conversions. It could also build a stronger brand.
Running a Power Lift Study without the operational headache
The first step was designing the study with Meta. It's called the Power Lift Study because it combines a conversion lift study with a brand lift study.
As Rocio said: "We designed the test with two cells. In the first cell, we included the BAU campaigns for acquisition and retention. In the second cell, we included the brand awareness layer alongside the performance campaign. Basically, it was the performance campaigns plus brand awareness versus just the performance campaigns. This allowed us to compare the results of both and test incrementality. We had a holdout group of 10%, meaning that part of the audience didn't see our ads.”
The test was set up by the Meta team. Otrium provided everything needed to be set up in their backend.
“The campaigns were launched through Hunch. We had a huge amount of ads, not only DPAs, but also different ads and (weekend) promos that we needed to refresh every week. So all the operational part was done through Hunch and that saved us a lot of hours.
We had to duplicate our BAU campaigns and set up a new one specifically for awareness, which was all managed through Hunch. This led to a significant increase in the number of ads we were running. During the whole test, which was four weeks, we were continuously uploading fresh creatives, adjusting budgets, and optimizing performance throughout that period all within Hunch. That’s what made the operational side of this campaign quite smooth.” - says Rocio.
A full funnel strategy consistently outperforms a performance-only approach
Conversion lift results: Meta ads drove an incremental 1.3k lift in purchases
Performance + Awareness drove 5.5% more than Performance alone. Showcasing that adding Awareness drives higher revenue and more conversions in general.
Performance alone did drive a bit higher ROAS. However, the Performance cell targeted a higher % of existing customers when compared to the Performance + Awareness cell.
This explains why cost per purchase was slightly lower on the Performance cell, hence the higher ROAS in general.
Brand lift results: Awareness significantly enhances brand perception
Awareness plays a role beyond immediate conversions by increasing demand on other platforms like Google.
People who saw the Awareness + Performance ads remembered Otrium more and felt more positively about the brand, with an 18% brand lift compared to just 6% from Performance alone.
Performance + Awareness drove a higher conversion lift than Performance alone, with a 233% increase in branded searches. This indicates that significantly more people were actively looking for Otrium on Google after seeing our ads on Meta.
Across all three brand lift questions, Awareness + Performance was more cost-efficient than Performance alone.
Final verdict
A full-funnel strategy (performance + awareness) consistently outperforms a performance-only approach across revenue, conversions, brand demand, and brand perception.
While performance alone yields slightly better ROAS, it benefits from the absence of budget caps on existing customer spend, allowing it to allocate more budget toward high-ROAS audiences.
Investing in awareness alongside performance is critical for maximizing conversion volume, revenue, and long-term brand growth.
