Salomon, known globally for premium outdoor gear, wanted more out of its Meta advertising - stronger returns, tighter efficiency, and a path to scale without the cost creep that usually comes with it. TDMC tested Meta's Advantage+ shopping campaigns against Salomon's standard activity, putting Meta's AI-driven optimisation to work across acquisition and retention audiences simultaneously. The results spoke for themselves: a 63% lift in sales volume, a 37% increase in sales value, and a 65% drop in cost per sale.
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Executive Summary
02
Introduction
Salomon has built its global reputation on innovation and quality in outdoor gear and equipment. But reputation alone doesn't win in e-commerce - performance does, and the category Salomon competes in is as crowded as they come. With scale as the goal, Salomon needed its Meta advertising to work harder without working less efficiently, and turned to TDMC to find out how.
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The Problem
Ad spend efficiency was hard to protect while scaling.
Salomon's standard Meta campaigns delivered, but maintaining a strong ROAS became increasingly difficult as spend increased - a familiar tension between growth and efficiency.
Audience segmentation was costing more than it returned.
Running separate campaigns for acquisition and retention audiences demanded extra time and management, without translating into proportionally better performance.
Ad relevance wasn't keeping pace with audience expectations.
Delivering genuinely personalised ad experiences at scale proved difficult within Salomon's existing campaign structure, and conversion rates reflected it.
Taken together, these challenges pointed to one underlying issue: Salomon's ad approach was working hard, but not smart enough to match the efficiency the brand needed to scale.
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The Solution
TDMC tested Meta's Advantage+ shopping campaigns alongside Salomon's existing activity - a campaign type built to merge acquisition and retention signals into a single objective, handing the optimisation work over to Meta's AI.
Automated optimisation, continuously
Rather than static, manually managed placements, Advantage+ campaigns use Meta's AI to continuously adjust and refine ad delivery in pursuit of maximum efficiency.
Broad reach without losing precision
By blending wide-reaching targeting with precise audience signals, the campaigns reached new audiences at scale while staying relevant to the people most likely to convert.
Shopping experiences personalised in real time
Rather than showing every viewer the same products, Advantage+ dynamically surfaced items from Salomon's catalogue most relevant to each individual - lifting both engagement and conversion.
Scaling without the usual overhead
By consolidating acquisition and retention into one streamlined structure, Advantage+ removed much of the manual campaign management that previously stood in the way of efficient scaling.
TDMC built the campaign around Salomon's product catalogue and audience data, pairing that insight with Meta's AI to give the test the best possible chance of proving its value.
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Results
The test made the case for Advantage+ decisively.
- 63% increase in sales volume - a clear signal that automated optimisation was converting more efficiently than the standard approach.
- 37% increase in sales value - growth that came alongside higher transaction numbers, not at the expense of them.
- 65% reduction in cost per sale - proof that the efficiency gains weren't just about volume, but about getting more for every rand spent.
- 65% increase in reach - expanding Salomon's audience while still delivering the personalised experience that drove conversion.
Across the board, the results pointed in the same direction: more sales, lower cost, broader reach - without trading one for another.
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Conclusion
For Salomon, this test answered a question that matters to any brand scaling in a competitive category: can ad spend grow more efficiently as it grows bigger? With Advantage+, the answer was a clear yes. The partnership between TDMC's campaign expertise and Meta's AI-driven tools didn't just deliver a strong quarter of results - it gave Salomon a proven, scalable approach to carry forward as ad spend, and ambitions, continue to grow.
