Stop the scroll. The rest follows.
How hook-based creative testing took Batch Balance’s Meta ads from a 2.34x to a 4.29x ROAS in one month — with only a 33% increase in spend. A case study in treating thumb stop rate as the upstream lever for everything else.
4.29x
ROAS · up from 2.34x
$22.80
CPA · down 38%
31.2%
Thumb stop · up 118%
+145%
Purchase value
Seen, but not stopping the scroll
Batch Balance’s account was carried by a single evergreen static ad and an early wave of KOC creator content. It worked — but only modestly. Over May 14–June 13, the account produced a 2.34x ROAS at a $36.81 CPA, with an average thumb stop rate of just 14.3%. Creative was getting seen, but not stopping the scroll, and that ceiling was capping everything downstream.
33% more spend, 145% more revenue
Over the following month we moved the creative strategy through a deliberate progression: away from static evergreen imagery and early UGC-style KOC images, into structured video briefs with clearer hooks, and finally into organic, IG-native UGC built around a specific attention-grabbing tactic rather than polish. The compounding came from creative quality, not budget scaling.
| Metric | May 14 – Jun 13 | Jun 14 – Jul 14 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| ROAS | 2.34x | 4.29x | +84% |
| CPA | $36.81 | $22.80 | −38% |
| Thumb stop rate | 14.3% | 31.2% | +118% |
| Purchases | 79 | 170 | +115% |
| Spend | $2,908 | $3,876 | +33% |
| Purchase value | $6,793 | $16,628 | +145% |
01
Evergreen statics & early KOC
The prior baseline. The Savory Flavors evergreen ad held a 2.57x ROAS and an 8% thumb stop rate on $1,400 of spend; an early KOC video returned just 1.23x ROAS at a $66 CPA. Seen, rarely paused on.
02
Structured video briefs
Video Briefs 004 and 005, launched June 12, brought clearer hooks than the static content: 3.25x and 2.35x ROAS with thumb stop rates around 23%. Solid — and they kept the account healthy while the organic format was tested and scaled.
03
IG-native, hook-first UGC
Casual, organic-feeling video built around a specific attention-grabbing tactic rather than polish. The highest thumb stop rates and the best conversion efficiency in the account — by a wide margin.
IG Post 004: the How To hook
A casual, organic-feeling video: a mom explaining that a muffin recipe “took 15 minutes,” despite a minor mishap along the way. Launched June 19, it spent $1,150 and returned $8,622 in purchase value — a 7.5x ROAS at a $14.37 CPA, with a 57.7% thumb stop rate, more than double any prior creative in the account.
That single ad is largely responsible for pulling the account’s blended thumb stop rate from 14% to 31%.
The ads, as they ran
Four of the account’s top creatives to date — both cuts of Video Brief 003, “The Protein Breakfast You Were Trying to Find”; Video Brief 004, whose hook stops one in two viewers; and the street-interview format.
“Creatives that earned a pause in the first three seconds went on to convert more efficiently — thumb stop is the upstream lever everything else flows from.”
The takeaway
Shifting from simple static ads to structured, hook-first testing — culminating in relatable, organic-style UGC — nearly doubled ROAS, cut CPA by more than a third, and more than doubled thumb stop rate in a single month, on a modest spend increase. Continued investment in casual, hook-driven UGC, particularly How To and relatable “real moment” framing, is the clearest lever for further scaling.