Deep Dive Into Silk’s Highest-Spend Quarters

Key Takeaways

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Silk Canada aggressively tapped into paid advertising in the first two quarters of 2021. In May alone, the company spent $406K to run paid advertising. When it comes to ad formats, Silk opted for short 15-second brand awareness videos. The company focused on uplifting brand awareness rather than advertising specific SKUs. $1M dollars was invested in general brand ads, while the remaining $159K was allocated to support specific products.

Budget Distribution — Silk Invested 73% of its Advertising Dollars into YouTube. The brand allocated $957,265 to the YouTube platform, which was split between two 15-second video creatives. 90% of the budget supported the desktop distribution of these videos.  

Budget Distribution  — Silk Spent $192K to Run Product-Focused Ads on Facebook. The brand deployed a different strategy on Facebook – Silk double-downed on short videos promoting specific products rather than investing in general brand recognition. The company allocated $66K to promote its new Almond & Cashew high-protein milk, as well as oat milk ($16K) and oat yogurt ($14K). It’s worth mentioning that that Silk didn’t run any Instagram ads during the first two quarters of 2021.

Budget Distribution  — Silk Invested $24K Into Display Advertising. Silk used the same two 15-second videos it ran on YouTube to capture the attention of news and cooking websites audiences. Cbc.ca and walmart.ca received the largest allocation of Silk’s display advertising budget, $5K and $4K respectively.

Budget Distribution — Search Was the Least Priority Channel for Silk Canada in Q1–Q2 2021. The brand allocated $13K to capture relevant search traffic, mainly targeting those browsing on mobile devices (59%). 

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Silk significantly increased its digital advertising spending in 2021 after two years of minimal investments in digital ads. In the first 2 quarters of 2021 Silk Canada spent $1.2M on digital ads.

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In May 2021, Silk Canada invested $406K in digital ads — the highest amount the brand spent on paid ads in the last fours years. 

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Silk Canada invested 73% (~$1M) of its total Q1-Q2 2021 advertising budget to run video ads on YouTube.

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Silk split its $957K YouTube budget between two 15-second ads aimed to drive brand awareness rather than focusing on a specific product.

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On Facebook Silk ran primarily product-focused ads. 50% of the total Facebook budget was invested into three video ads highlighting new almond & cashew milk ($66K) and oat milk ($16K) as well as oat yogurt ($14K)

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91% of Silk’s Facebook ads targeted iOS device users, who were predominantly female (63%)

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When it comes to the geographical budget distribution, Silk ran most of its ads in the metropolitan cities — 12% of the ads targeted audience in Toronto, with both Montreal and Vancouver getting 9%

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For its display ads, Silk leveraged the same 15-second videos as on YouTube, distributing them on news, Walmart and cooking websites. 

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Silk primarily targeted mobile users with its search ads. The brand opted for text-based search ads and didn’t run any product ads. 

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Overall during Q1-Q2, Silk chose to invest 73% of its total paid advertising budget to drive general brand name awareness. The remaining part of the budget was spent on supporting the following products:

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