Case Study
Poshmark Reclaims $25K in Monthly Ad Spend, Fueling New Growth Experiments
Social marketplace powerhouse turns wasted ad spend into a strategic growth fund, unlocking new opportunities in paid media without increasing budget.
- Company: Poshmark
- Challenge: Defending branded search terms was leading to significant, unavoidable ad spend on uncontested clicks, limiting the budget available for growth-focused initiatives.
- Solution: Revvim AdAi
Objectives:
- Reduce Ad Cost
- Maintain Ad Performance
- Create Growth Budget
The Challenge: The High Cost of Defending Brand Equity
As a leading social marketplace, Poshmark invests significantly in its brand. A key part of its strategy involves protecting its valuable branded search terms. However, this defensive necessity came at a high cost. A substantial portion of their budget was spent on clicks they could have won at a lower cost: Uncontested auctions where no competitor was present.
This situation represented a classic “SEM tax” dilemma: pay to protect brand equity from potential bidders, or risk losing valuable traffic. The result was a frustrating reality for their marketing team. A significant portion of their budget was trapped in defensive spending, leaving fewer resources to invest in innovative, growth-driving campaigns and experiments on other platforms. The team needed a way to stop overspending on defense and start funding offense.
Results
- $25,000 in average monthly savings
- 67% decrease in Cost-Per-Click (CPC) for uncontested brand terms
- 89% of targeted ad clicks identified as uncontested and shifted to low-cost bids
- Stable conversion rates at +0.1% difference means no lost revenue
- 355% ROI delivered by the AdAi platform
The Solution: Unlocking Trapped Capital with Real-Time Intelligence
Poshmark partnered with Revvim to deploy AdAi, a solution designed to solve this exact problem. AdAi’s patented, real-time system works alongside a company’s existing tech stack to intelligently analyze ad auctions. It instantly determines whether an auction is contested by a competitor or not.
This capability allowed Poshmark to adopt a two-pronged strategy:
- For contested clicks: Continue bidding competitively to protect their brand terms.
- For uncontested clicks: Automatically lower the bid to as little as $0.01, paying the minimum required to win the click, while keeping the ads up 100% of the time.
The implementation was seamless, requiring no changes to Poshmark’s workflows or existing campaign structures. Revvim’s persistent campaigns ensured there were no interruptions in ad coverage, providing a fully automated safety net that optimized their budget without manual intervention.
We knew we were spending a fortune on branded search, but it felt like a necessary cost of doing business. The challenge was figuring out how to defend our turf without overspending on uncontested clicks. We weren't just looking for savings; we were looking for capital to fund our next wave of growth.
The Results: From Automatic Savings to Strategic Reinvestment
This efficiency translated directly into reclaimed budget. AdAi delivered an estimated $25,000 in monthly savings, freeing up funds for strategic reinvestment. Conversions remained stable, proving that the savings came with no negative impact on performance. Today, AdAi continues to deliver budget savings at an impressive 355% ROI.
Most importantly, Poshmark transformed these savings into a powerful growth engine. The marketing team reallocated the reclaimed budget to expand their paid media efforts and experiment with new, high-potential ad formats on other platforms. This included:
- Testing advanced machine-learning campaigns like Meta’s Advantage+ to find incremental ROAS at scale.
- Introducing video assets into their social ad mix for the first time to capture new audiences.
- Expanding SKU coverage in their product feeds and widening placements to dynamic formats like Reels and Stories.
The beauty of this was its simplicity. The savings showed up almost overnight, with no drop in conversions. That gave us immediate, tangible budget to play with. We weren’t just cutting costs, we were re-investing every dollar into channels and formats that we previously couldn't prioritize.
Conclusion: A New Playbook for Growth
Poshmark’s partnership with Revvim demonstrates a sophisticated approach to budget optimization. By eliminating wasted spend on uncontested branded clicks, they didn’t just improve efficiency – they unlocked a new, self-funding source for strategic marketing initiatives. This allowed them to increase their overall ad investment and innovate on other platforms without raising their budget, proving that the smartest way to grow is to make your existing budget work harder.