Saving money is tough. Saving money during a global pandemic when there’s nothing to do but scroll social media, while getting served data-driven ads custom-tailored to your interests? That’s even tougher. Instagram has transitioned from a place to communicate with friends to an e-commerce platform that tracks every click and force-feeds you ads around the clock. As screen time went up, impulse buying went up right along with it. Fifth Third Bank wanted to create a way to help people avoid the temptation of targeted ads and give them a break so they could save up for what they really want instead.

Introducing the Buy Now Blocker, the first targeted ad campaign on social media whose main goal was to get you NOT to buy something.

We created a data-driven media buy that targeted 100 of the most common impulse purchases on social media and used the same targeting methods as the retailers to serve our “blocked” ads instead. When users clicked our links, they got a free savings app to help them save up for the things they actually want.

To ensure that each ad was hyper-tailored to the end user, we created 100 unique social assets and 100 different targeting groups for each of these impulse purchases.

Our media strategy was to execute the ads in the most granular way possible. Each creative asset had a dedicated, unique campaign set and target audience, based on interest keywords that aligned with the message we were serving. Capitalizing on Facebook’s robust targeting capabilities, we were able to ensure that each of the 100 creative ads was hyper-tailored to the end users.

Our creative approach aimed to capture attention with a bold headline, while recreating the familiar imagery of a “blocked” webpage, to create a scroll-stopping, head-scratching, in-feed experience.

Once we captured their attention, users were invited to save up for what they really want by learning more about the Dobot Savings app by Fifth Third. The Dobot app is designed to help people set and meet their savings goals, while even offering savings advice and coaching along the way.

Our blocked ads were supported on Facebook and Instagram, where tempting “Buy now” ads are particularly pervasive. Optimizing for impressions, each of the 100 ad sets aimed to reach as many targeted users as possible with the media budget.

Our media strategy was to get as granular as possible. Each creative asset had a unique ad set and target audience, based on interest keywords that aligned with the messaging we were serving.

This is the first ever social campaign that measured success by how many people did NOT buy something.

With two weeks and a modest $40,600 media budget, the Buy Now Blocker social campaign was able to reach a total of 22 MILLION people. Of the 22 million people who saw the “blocked” ads, 100% of them didn’t buy something they’d regret.