Demand Gen on $10/Day: 261 Skincare Purchases for $192
In 18 days on a strict $10 daily budget, skincare eCommerce brand Hearticy’s Demand Gen campaign generated 261 purchases for $192 — an unprecedented $0.74 per purchase.
The Starting Point
Hearticy, a specialized skincare eCommerce brand, needed paying customers — not vanity traffic, not empty video views — on a disciplined test budget of just $10 per day.
The Bottleneck: Traditional search ads in the skincare space had inflated CPCs ($3.50+ per click), making top-of-funnel customer acquisition impossible on a small budget. They needed a format that could discover high-intent buyers visually across YouTube Shorts, Discover, and Gmail without burning capital.
What We Engineered
- Single Conversion Anchor.The campaign optimized toward one event and one event only: completed purchases. Micro-conversions (add-to-cart, view-content) were intentionally excluded from bidding to prevent the algorithm from chasing cheap non-buyers.
- Google Demand Gen Format Selection.Leveraged Google’s Demand Gen inventory to display high-resolution visual problem-solution cards directly inside YouTube feeds and Google Discover where visual skincare decision-making happens.
- Strict $10/Day Spend Fence.Enforced a hard budget ceiling. Google’s automated bidding flagged the campaign as “Limited by Budget” — exactly where we wanted it, ensuring every dollar was squeezed for maximum return before increasing spend.
- Patience Through Algorithm Dips.Rather than tweaking bids or restarting campaigns when daily sales swung up and down, we let the machine learning stabilize across the 18-day learning window, resulting in massive compounding efficiency.
What Changed
Between September 30 and October 18, the campaign consumed a total of $192.14 and returned 261 confirmed purchases. The resulting $0.74 cost per acquisition allowed the founder to scale operations with complete confidence that ad spend was generating immediate positive cash flow.
“PhotoPixc proved that you don’t need a $10,000/month budget to scale eCommerce. In 18 days, we acquired 261 real skincare customers for less than two hundred dollars. It fundamentally changed how we forecast our growth.”
What to Measure in Your Account
Real numbers from live Google Ads ad accounts.
- Cost Per Purchase (CPA): Tracked via verified GA4 purchase conversions.
- Conversion Value / Cost: Return on ad spend calculated against verified cart revenue.
- Budget Utilization Rate: Ensuring bids don’t outpace daily profitability.
- New Customer Acquisition Percentage: First-time buyers vs repeat customers.
Ready to Acquire Customers Profitably on Demand Gen?
Let us audit your current ad setup. We will show you how to structure a disciplined, high-return customer acquisition campaign.