Driving Smarter Retail Decisions with Paid Social Advertising
How AR Marketing Supported a 13-Week Pricing Test for KJ's Market & IGA
The Challenge
KJ's Market and IGA launched a 13-week soda pricing test to evaluate different pricing strategies across multiple store groups. To produce meaningful results, each strategy needed consistent visibility among shoppers while maintaining comparable advertising support across test markets.
Managing the initiative required more than simply boosting weekly ads. With 10 distinct audience segments, multiple pricing strategies and fresh creative every week, the campaign demanded a scalable paid social program capable of delivering consistent execution while generating data that could support a larger business decision.
The Strategy
AR Marketing developed and managed a centralized Meta advertising program designed to support the pricing test throughout its 13-week flight.
The campaign provided consistent weekly execution while allowing for precise geographic targeting and ongoing optimization across participating KJ's Market and IGA store groups.
Our approach included:
- Management of 10 distinct audience segments and ad sets each week
- Market-specific targeting across KJ's Market and IGA store groups
- Weekly deployment of refreshed creative aligned with each week's digital ad carousel
- Continuous campaign monitoring and optimization to maximize efficiency
- Strategic budget allocation based on market size and opportunity
- Comprehensive weekly reporting and performance analysis
Each week, AR Marketing provided detailed insights into spend, impressions, reach, click-through rate (CTR), cost per click (CPC) and engagement by market. This gave the client visibility into what was performing, where it was performing and when performance shifted throughout the test.
Rather than waiting until the end of the 13 weeks to evaluate results, the team had an ongoing feedback loop that paired paid media performance with the client's pricing, sales and basket analysis.
The Results
Paid social delivered consistent visibility and engagement across the store groups throughout the 13-week test.
Campaign Performance
- 27,153,017 Impressions
- 518,725 Website Clicks
- $0.38 Average Cost Per Click
The campaign generated more than 27 million opportunities for shoppers to see weekly promotions and drove more than 518,000 visits to KJ's Market and IGA's digital weekly ads.
But the value of the campaign extended beyond media performance.
Business Impact
The ultimate goal of the test was to determine which pricing strategy would drive the strongest overall business results, not simply the highest sales of soda.
Price Strategy 2 emerged as the preferred strategy, outperforming the control group in several key areas:
- Net Sales: 4 percentage points better than control
- Transactions: 5 percentage points better than control
- Units: 4 percentage points better than control
While another pricing strategy delivered slightly stronger sales and margin results in some areas, Price Strategy 2 attracted more shoppers and generated greater value across their total purchases.
In other words, the strategy wasn't just effective at selling soda, it helped drive more valuable shopping trips overall. That additional basket value was strong enough to offset the lower margin associated with the soda pricing itself.
Based on the combined sales, transaction and shopper basket results, KJ's Market and IGA selected Price Strategy 2 for implementation moving forward.
Why Paid Social Matters
Paid social played an important role in creating consistent promotional support for the pricing test. Rather than relying on organic reach, each pricing strategy could be promoted directly to shoppers within its designated market throughout the 13-week period.
That meant advertising wasn't simply a vehicle for generating impressions and clicks. It became part of the testing framework, providing controlled, geographically targeted exposure alongside measurable weekly performance data.
Through this campaign, paid advertising enabled KJ's Market and IGA to:
- Extend weekly promotions beyond organic audiences
- Deliver targeted advertising across multiple test markets
- Drive more than 518,000 visits to digital weekly ads
- Track shopper engagement by audience and market each week
- Identify which promotions and pricing strategies generated the strongest response
- Connect advertising performance with sales and basket data
- Turn campaign insights into a real-world pricing decision
This 13-week test demonstrates how paid social advertising can do more than amplify a promotion. With strategic targeting, ongoing optimization and detailed reporting, paid media can provide valuable insights that help inform broader business decisions.
AR Marketing helped KJ's Market and IGA consistently reach shoppers across test markets while tracking performance week over week. By pairing those advertising insights with sales, transaction and basket data, the client gained a clearer picture of how each pricing strategy influenced shopper behavior.
The result went beyond 27 million impressions and 518,000 clicks. The campaign helped turn advertising data into actionable business intelligence, ultimately supporting the selection and implementation of a pricing strategy that drove more valuable shopping trips.
