Driving BFCM Growth for Pura Vida Through Smarter Paid Media Strategy

With just 24 hours before Black Friday, Granular stepped in to help Pura Vida, a lifestyle jewelry and accessories brand, navigate one of the most important shopping periods of the year. Facing a reduced advertising budget compared to the previous year, the team needed to maximize performance across Google Ads while identifying opportunities to improve efficiency and scale. In addition to Google, a comprehensive Meta audit identified additional opportunities for improvement. Through strategic budget allocation and real-time campaign optimization, Granular helped Pura Vida exceed its Black Friday/Cyber Monday return on ad spend (ROAS) and sales goals.

The Opportunity

Heading into Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025, Pura Vida faced a significant challenge: its Q4 advertising budget had been cut in half compared to 2024, leaving less room for error during the busiest shopping period of the year.

Granular’s initial scope focused on Google Search, Shopping, and a Demand Gen campaign. With limited time to prepare, the team needed to make every dollar count while ensuring campaigns could capture demand during peak shopping hours.

The priorities were clear:

Maximize performance with a significantly reduced budget.
Allocate spend strategically across the BFCM shopping period.
Prevent high-performing campaigns from hitting budget limits during peak demand.
Identify opportunities to improve campaign structure and efficiency.

At the same time, Pura Vida’s existing Meta account presented additional opportunities. Inconsistent attribution settings, fragmented promotional campaigns, and underutilized creative assets were limiting the brand’s ability to make the most of its paid social investment.

The challenge wasn’t simply to increase ad spend. It was to make smarter decisions with the budget available.

Granular’s Solution:

Granular took a hands-on, data-driven approach to BFCM, combining historical performance analysis with real-time campaign management. The team also conducted a comprehensive Meta audit to identify opportunities for longer-term growth.

Strategic Budget Allocation

Using Google’s 2024 performance data, Granular developed a spending strategy that
accounted for demand throughout the entire BFCM shopping period, including the days following Cyber Monday.

Rather than distributing spend evenly, the team strategically ramped up budgets to capitalize on periods of higher purchase intent.

Real-Time Campaign Optimization

Granular monitored campaign performance hourly throughout BFCM, making adjustments to ensure campaigns remained active during peak shopping hours across both East and West Coast US markets.

Working closely with Google’s team, Granular monitored conversions and budgets in real time, demonstrated the value of the Google Search, Shopping, and Demand Gen campaigns with respect to Pura Vida’s marketing and business goals, resulting in securing additional budget approvals when opportunities emerged.

Shopping Campaign Restructuring

Our team restructured Google Shopping campaigns to create more opportunities to scale, while addressing underperforming Search campaigns.

This approach helped direct spend toward campaigns positioned to capture demand during the critical holiday shopping window.

Meta Account Audit and Restructuring

Beyond Google, Granular identified several opportunities to improve Pura Vida’s Meta ad strategy.

The existing account relied heavily on dynamic ads for broad audiences (DABAs), while inconsistent attribution settings and fragmented promotional campaigns limited delivery to other creative formats.

Granular introduced several improvements:

Standardized attribution settings to a 7-day click and 1-day view/engaged window.
Established separate new customer acquisition (NCA) and retention campaigns.
Improved product feed management by incorporating secondary product images and prioritizing core products based on margin and inventory.
Expanded creative testing using professional product photography, user-generated content (UGC), and video.
Allocated dedicated budgets to seasonal creative, including sorority and game-day campaigns, to ensure these ads received meaningful exposure.
Incorporated video into catalog ads to create more engaging shopping experiences.

These changes gave Pura Vida greater control over campaign delivery while making better use of the brand’s existing creative assets.

The Results

Granular’s BFCM strategy delivered results, exceeding Pura Vida’s 237% ROAS target and achieving 249%, as measured through Triple Whale’s multi-channel attribution platform.

The success of the holiday campaign, combined with the opportunities identified through the Meta audit, demonstrated the value of a more integrated paid media and advanced measurement approach.

The results extended beyond BFCM. Following the engagement, Granular earned the opportunity to manage Pura Vida’s broader paid digital marketing strategy, with subsequent expansion into Pinterest and Snapchat.

What began as a time-sensitive holiday engagement evolved into a larger partnership built around performance, efficiency, and continued growth.