Blue Wheel helps Ariat achieve a 620% CTR increase with Amazon DSP Performance+

Goals

As retail media investment grows and advertisers seek greater efficiency, AI-powered optimization has become essential for competitive advantage. Like many growing brands, Ariat—a leading performance footwear and apparel brand—faced the challenge of scaling upper-funnel advertising while maintaining profitability. The brand had built a strong presence on Amazon through standard Amazon DSP remarketing campaigns and broader Amazon store investments but sought more scalable and efficient ways to drive incremental growth without sacrificing operational control.

Ariat partnered with Blue Wheel, an Amazon Ads advanced partner and an omnichannel performance marketing agency that helps brands scale with full-funnel Amazon strategies, to answer a critical question: could Amazon DSP Performance+ outperform traditional Amazon DSP campaign structures that relied on static audience segmentation and manual bid management? As the brand expanded their customer acquisition efforts, they needed a testing framework to measure the impact of AI-powered optimization within a live retail environment. Specifically, Ariat aimed to evaluate whether Amazon DSP’s dynamic, signal-based bidding and predictive audience modeling could improve media efficiency, increase shopper engagement, drive stronger new-to-brand acquisition, and deliver higher return on ad spend (ROAS) without compromising measurement rigor or long-term campaign stability.

Approach

Blue Wheel designed a disciplined test-and-learn framework to evaluate the incremental impact of Amazon DSP Performance+ within a live retail environment. The team executed a controlled three-month experiment comparing Performance+ multi-product display ad campaigns against a control group built from traditional Amazon DSP remarketing strategies.

Both campaign structures focused on the same high-intent audience—shoppers who viewed product detail pages without purchasing—ensuring consistent measurement conditions. The differentiator was Performance+’s use of Amazon’s AI-powered optimization. This technology uses first-party shopper signals to dynamically adjust bidding, audience prioritization, and ad delivery based on conversion probability and behavioral engagement patterns.

Rather than relying on static audience segmentation and manual bidding logic, the strategy leveraged machine learning to identify incremental converters and scale acquisition more efficiently. Budgets, creative assets, and campaign timing were standardized across test groups to preserve measurement integrity and isolate automation-driven impact. Blue Wheel further enhanced performance through strategic oversight of efficiency thresholds, budget allocation, and product prioritization, while mid-flight ROAS adjustments unlocked additional scale without materially sacrificing profitability. This structured methodology enabled Ariat to confidently evaluate automation at scale while minimizing operational risk and maintaining campaign continuity.

Results

Amazon DSP Performance+ delivered significant AI-driven performance improvements by combining Amazon’s first-party shopper signals with machine learning-based bidding and audience optimization. The campaign exceeded efficiency and acquisition expectations across all four KPIs, validating the potential of automation-driven advertising at scale.

Click-through rate (CTR) increased by 620%, significantly outperforming the control group and showing stronger shopper engagement.¹ At the same time, effective cost per click (eCPC) decreased by 72%, improving media efficiency while driving a 134% increase in detail page views (DPV).² Return metrics also improved substantially, with ROAS increasing by 60% and new-to-brand (NTB) ROAS improving by 107%, highlighting the campaign’s ability to efficiently acquire new customers at scale.³

These gains were achieved without compromising measurement rigor or campaign stability. The controlled test-and-learn framework ensured that performance improvements could be directly attributed to Performance+’s AI-powered optimization rather than external factors.

The test validated how AI-powered optimization can scale acquisition efforts, improve decision-making speed, and reduce reliance on manual audience segmentation and bidding strategies—creating a more sustainable long-term advertising framework for Ariat on the Amazon store. These results demonstrate how Amazon DSP Performance+ can help brands scale acquisition while maintaining profitability.

Sources

^1-3 Ariat, US, 2025.