We set out to help our client, a leading Pharma brand, authentically harness trending social and cultural user-generated content on Instagram. By alpha testing Meta’s Reels Trending Ads, we secured premium placements for the brand’s top-performing Reels assets, positioning branded content next to the top 1% of trending creator content on Instagram. Our goal was to build brand awareness, achieve impression and reach targets, and surpass industry benchmarks for ad recall—all in a guaranteed brand-safe environment.
This Alpha test was a seamless extension of the brand’s existing media strategy, tapping into current budget and creative. The execution was straightforward, yet powerful: our ads were strategically placed adjacent to the top 1% of trending, user-generated Instagram content, ensuring a highly visible, brand-safe environment.
Operating within such a high-demand space resulted in a fixed CPM of $15, higher than brand standards and benchmarks. While this could be perceived as a challenge, the brand viewed it as a justifiable premium for guaranteed brand safety and adjacency, which results ultimately validated. Initial testing targeted 18+ users from April 28th to May 16th, 2025 aimed at driving awareness. Our work's uniqueness stems from being an early adopter in this Alpha phase as one of the first 20 brands globally to adopt this new placement, meticulously testing and proving the efficacy of a premium, brand-safe placement for impactful reach and awareness.
Following a successful alpha, Meta invited our client to subsequently test an enhanced ad product. Version 2 of this strategy enabled advertisers to tailor targeting by age/demo and topic selection. Our strategy evolved into a more niche target demographic (35+), more closely aligned with the brand’s userbase. This second test ran from September 9th to September 30th, 2025, under the same Awareness objective, with results being compared between the two timeframes for performance improvements.
The results of our Reels Content Adjacency Alpha test were an unequivocal success, meeting and surpassing our ambitious objectives. Both campaigns demonstrated exceptional predictability, delivering 100% of reserved impression and unique reach goals.
Brand Lift Study results proved the potent impact of this premium placement. While Test 1 Ad Recall outperformed the vertical norm by 6.8%, Test 2 and its evolutions in ad targeting saw ad recall lift skyrocket, improving 161% from Test #1 and outperforming both vertical norms (179%) and North American norms (73%). These results were a clear indicator that further refinement of target audiences drives even greater ad recall. Test #2 also produced significant lifts in familiarity (238% above North American norms) and intent, which produced strong results typically difficult to achieve for a custom question. This validated Reels Trending as a powerful tool for driving awareness, enhancing current campaign strategies, and demonstrated that pairing performant brand content with high-impact user-generated content maintains attention, deepens curiosity and drives the highest levels of intentional engagement.
