Cost per acquisition down 81.1%across three holiday seasonsonce the restrictions lifted.
Grecos Holiday is a tour operator from Poznań that sells one destination: Greece. It has run holidays there since 2006, across 20 destinations and nearly 250 hotels. After the pandemic break, people wanted to travel again, and the cost of reaching someone ready to book rose with that demand. Below is how three seasons on Meta brought that cost down, and the format decision behind the second cut.
- -81.1%
- cost per acquisition, 2021 to 2023
- -73.1%
- cost per acquisition in 2022 alone
- -29.7%
- a further cut in 2023, from the lower base
- 0.24% to 0.67%
- outbound click-through rate over the same seasons
Travel demand came back at a higher price per buyer.
The buyer got more expensive
The market recovered after the pandemic, and the cost of reaching a person ready to purchase rose with it. The brief was to bring cost per acquisition down while the season was still open.
One country, a wide pool of maybes
A tour operator with a single destination has to find the people who want Greece, out of everyone who might want a holiday. Some of them still doubted travel abroad, so the message had to answer safety and flexibility before it could sell a hotel.
A budget with promises attached
The money had to serve sales and the brand, plus exposure commitments for selected hotels and departure cities, and a set number of impressions owed to investors. Every złoty spent on exposure was a złoty the sales goal could not use, unless the two could share it.
Video cost over twice as much to show, and less per booking.
Departure cities and hotels as separate budget lines
Campaigns and ad sets were split so each departure city and each promoted hotel could be read on its own. Budget then moved during the season toward the lines that produced bookings, and the weak ones showed up fast enough to fix.
An end-of-season push the plan did not include
The client had not planned remarketing for the tail of the season. A few months after the pandemic, search trends pointed to people who had dreamed of a holiday during lockdown and could now take one. Remarketing reached them at that moment, and booking completions rose.
Commenters became next year’s audience
Light paid support on organic posts brought more comments, with tourists sharing memories and good opinions. The following year those commenters became a remarketing group of their own, people who had already said in public that they liked the trip.
Video bought through Reach & Frequency
The community skews over 40, and tests in the first year showed video selling at a lower cost per purchase and a lower CPC, with a CPM more than twice as high. So Reach & Frequency campaigns, which guarantee a set number of impressions for a set budget, ran next to the conversion campaigns. The impression commitment got met in the format that also sold. In the next season the client supplied better video, and cost per acquisition fell again.
Two cuts in a row compound to 81.1%.
The study reports cost per acquisition only as percentage changes, never as an amount in złoty. 2021 is the starting point, described as a high cost with no figure. The chart shows the two yearly cuts and the total the study gives for the whole stretch.
The middle bar is short because its base is small. A 29.7% cut taken from a cost that had already fallen 73.1% compounds to the 81.1% on the third bar, and the arithmetic closes. The study also tracks outbound click-through rate: 0.24% in 2021, 0.49% in 2022 and 0.67% in 2023. The original headlines that as a 179.17% increase, which is the same movement measured against a very small starting rate. It stays off this chart because a rising rate drawn next to a falling cost would read as two moves in the same direction. The study gives no spend and no count of bookings, so this page makes no claim about volume.
Rank your formats by the booking, never by the thousand impressions.
Judge a format by what one purchase costs through it. Here video carried a CPM more than twice as high as static, and still sold at a lower cost per purchase and a lower CPC. An account that ranks creative by CPM would have cut the format doing the selling. If your reporting sorts formats by cost per thousand, re-sort it by cost per purchase before your next budget review.
The second lesson sits in the commitment. Grecos owed a number of impressions, and Reach & Frequency bought them at a fixed price in the format that also converted. If you owe a partner exposure, put it in the format that sells. Your promise and your sales target then draw on the same money instead of splitting it.
This work was delivered by MTA Group, which Zero Fluff Digital is part of, by the same specialists who would work on your account. Every figure here comes from the case study MTA published, republished here with their consent. The reviews behind it are public and verified on Clutch, where clients rate the work rather than the agency describing itself.
Find the format that sells before you cut it for its CPM.
30 minutes, no deck. You come away knowing which of your Meta formats sell at the lowest cost per purchase on your own account, and where your exposure commitments could ride on them.
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