Facebook ads for a collectible card game brand

A niche card game brand was boosting Instagram posts itself and watching return on ad spend slowly tail off. A trial run took it from three or four times spend to about seven.

Harry, Collectible card game. Recorded August 2026.

Harry sells a collectible card game built around endangered animals, with a detail that explains the whole brand: the print run for each card matches the animal’s remaining wild population. Around ninety percent of the business is online, direct to families.

Things were not broken before we started. They were running their own ads, mostly boosting posts on Instagram, and it worked well enough for a while. What they noticed was the drift — return on ad spend easing downward month by month, which is what usually happens when the same creative keeps running to the same audience.

That is the point at which most brands go looking for help, and Harry spoke to several larger agencies first. The quotes were what you would expect. He ran a trial with me instead, which meant the decision could be made on results rather than on a pitch.

The account was restructured and given proper creative rotation rather than boosted posts. Return on ad spend roughly doubled, moving from three or four times to about seven.

A boosted post is not a campaign. It has no structure to optimise, no audience testing behind it, and no way to move budget toward what is working. Brands often outgrow that stage without noticing, because the decline is gradual rather than sudden.

If your ROAS has been quietly sliding for a few months on ads you set up yourself, that is usually the signal. The product is fine. The account has simply run out of room.

In Harry’s words