James Allen

The Objective

Proving TikTok's incremental value

James Allen is an online retailer specializing in diamond and bridal jewelry, offering custom-designed engagement rings and other fine jewelry. The brand has maintained a presence on TikTok for over three years, achieving favorable outcomes on the platform.

Nevertheless, the brand has faced challenges in comprehending the actual performance of its campaigns, as third-party analytics tools have indicated subpar results attributed to TikTok, particularly when compared to other marketing channels.

Given TikTok's nature as a view-oriented platform, traditional attribution models such as the last-click approach do not adequately capture the true value of TikTok. This discrepancy complicates the ability of brands to ascertain the actual effectiveness of their TikTok campaigns.

In James Allen's case, additional factors that add complexity include the extended consumer journey and a significant portion of conversions taking place on desktop. In order to reflect TikTok's true value, and to better assess TikTok's significance in the brand's media mix, James Allen and the TikTok team embarked on a GEO lift test.

The Solution

Conducting a third-party GEO lift test

To conduct the experiment, TikTok team collaborated with a third-party partner.

In this experiment, the primary target market, the United States, was divided into two distinct geographical units: a control group and a treatment group. The segmentation process was meticulously conducted through statistical analysis and machine learning to ensure a high degree of similarity between the two test cells, essentially making them virtually identical. This close correlation between the groups was essential to isolate the effects of the treatment from other variables.

Once the equivalence of the two groups was confirmed, we introduced the treatment, which involved a substantial increase in the media budget. It's important to note that no other changes or treatments were introduced during this phase.

The focus of this budget increase was on optimizing for View Shopping Cart conversions. Subsequently, the team successfully demonstrated that TikTok indeed produced a significant incremental increase in View Shopping Cart conversions.

The Results

TikTok generated a significant incremental lift

By conducting a GEO lift study, we proved that TikTok generated an incremental lift of 7.2% in View Shopping Carts conversions, with an incremental CPA of $40. This was in contrast to the CPA observed within a common third-party tool James Allen used during the test, which stood at $117. This means that the experiment was successful in demonstrating that TikTok was remarkably undervalued when measured by the third-party analytics tool, with a three times lower CPA than what has been attributed to the platform by the tool.