Specimen
Curated Chrome was our own brand. We built it, ran it, and sold it in March 2026, so every figure in this document is ours to publish in full and no client account appears anywhere on this page. The sections, the order and the tone are exactly what arrives every Monday. The period is the whole life of the account rather than a single week, because that is the window we can show you end to end.
The period in one line
Spend went out at a steady rate for seventeen months and the account reported 2.92 back for every euro in. The store banked considerably more than that. Section two is why we lead with both numbers instead of the flattering one.
What the platform claimed, and what the store banked
Share of store revenue Meta claimed for itself
Meta claimed just over a quarter of what the store took. The rest arrived through organic, email, repeat purchase and referral, from an audience these same ads were paying to build. Neither figure on its own is the truth. Both go in the report every week and we never quietly swap one for the other when it suits the story.
Where the money went
Spend by placement
Return by placement
Feed, Stories and Reels took almost the whole budget between them, and Feed returned the most of the three. Explore is the line worth arguing about: 644 euro spent at 3.90x, better than Reels and almost never given room to run. Facebook Reels at 1.43x is the one we would cut, and it is small enough that cutting it needs nobody's permission.
Who it reached
Spend by age
Spend by country, top six
Of the spend the demographic export covers, ninety one per cent went to people under thirty five, which was right for this catalogue rather than an accident of the algorithm. Geography is the open question. The United States alone took more than the next five countries put together, and none of the European markets was ever given a budget of its own to prove itself with.
The creative
Every headline that ran, ranked by spend
| Headline | Spend | Click rate | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elevate Your Style with Curated Chrome | €2 921 | 4.08% | 2.80x |
| STAND OUT | €2 320 | 3.10% | 2.35x |
| Discover Handcrafted Accessories That Define You | €1 291 | 2.77% | 2.79x |
| No headline set | €1 145 | 4.50% | 3.91x |
| Save Up to 50% Off This Black Friday! | €979 | 4.26% | 2.96x |
| Standout in a world of simple watches! | €838 | 5.03% | 3.91x |
| Up to 40% OFF Curated Chrome! Act Now or Regret! | €341 | 8.55% | 1.92x |
| Midnight Thorn Watch Out Now | €154 | 3.89% | 16.56x |
The two headlines that earned the most per euro are the two that got the least of it: a product announcement at 16.56x on 154 euro of spend, and a positioning line at 3.91x on 838. The discount headline has the best click rate on the sheet and the worst return on it, which is the entire argument against optimising anything to clicks.
What it left after cost
Gross margin by product line
| Product | Price | Cost | Gross | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Watch, 230 euro line | €229.95 | €129.40 | €100.55 | 43.7% |
| Watch, 250 euro line | €249.95 | €130.00 | €119.95 | 48.0% |
| Watch, 300 euro line | €299.95 | €173.00 | €126.95 | 42.3% |
| Custom watch, 350 euro line | €349.95 | €146.02 | €203.93 | 58.3% |
| Lighter case | €25.00 | €5.58 | €19.42 | 77.7% |
| Floral Cross bracelet | €35.00 | €10.27 | €24.73 | 70.7% |
| Radiant Bloom bracelet | €35.00 | €11.47 | €23.53 | 67.2% |
| Bloom Cross necklace | €44.00 | €6.86 | €37.14 | 84.3% |
A report that stops at return on ad spend is telling you half of it. Watches carry the revenue here and the accessories carry the margin: a 44 euro necklace at 84.3 per cent gross contributes more per order than a 300 euro watch at 42.3. That is a merchandising decision rather than an advertising one, and it belongs in the same document as the spend.
What we are doing about it this week
- Give Explore its own ad set. Four weeks, its own budget, so a placement returning 3.90x stops living on scraps from the others.
- Turn Facebook Reels off. 201 euro at 1.43x. It has had long enough.
- Two new statics on the announcement angle. The best return in the account came from a product announcement, and it ran once. We want to know whether that repeats.
- Push the accessories into the top product set. Highest margin, lowest price point, currently buried underneath the watches in the feed.
What we need from you
- Stock confirmation on the two accessory lines before we put budget behind them.
That is the whole list. Most weeks it is one line and some weeks it is empty, because the point of the report is to take work off your desk rather than move it there.