PERFORMANCE MARKETING · USER ACQUISITION
It started as a test. One month, one campaign, nearly 3,000 real grocery purchases. Happy Ads didn't just prove the concept for Cheetay — we proved what performance marketing can do when it's done right.
The Challenge
Cheetay — Pakistan's homegrown quick-commerce and grocery delivery platform — was operating in Airlift and Bazaar's shadow. With less brand recognition, a smaller marketing budget, and a smaller delivery footprint, Cheetay needed to demonstrate that its performance marketing could punch above its weight class. The brief was unusually direct: run a test campaign, prove the economics work, and validate that Cheetay's unit economics could support performance-driven scale.
The test campaign context meant the budget was constrained and the expectations were high. Every rupee had to produce a measurable first-order event, not just impressions or installs. The client needed to see purchase events — real grocery orders completed through the app — within a 30-day window that would either validate or invalidate the case for scaling performance marketing.
Cheetay's challenge was also one of competitive creative positioning: in a market where Airlift and other competitors were running active campaigns, Cheetay's creative had to differentiate on product strengths (local brand familiarity, specific delivery zones, product range) without the budget to outspend the competition.
The Solution
Happy Ads designed a 30-day test campaign for Cheetay with a single, unambiguous success metric: completed grocery purchases. The campaign ran on programmatic mobile inventory targeting Pakistan's grocery-intent audience — users engaging with food content, cooking apps, and recipe platforms — combined with Meta performance ads optimised for purchase events rather than app installs.
Creative was built around Cheetay's local brand character: a Pakistani-owned grocery delivery brand that understood what local households actually needed. Price-led creative led the campaign (first-order offers, weekly grocery basket deals) with delivery speed and convenience as secondary messages. The campaign ran in Cheetay's core delivery zones, eliminating wasted spend on users outside the delivery footprint.
The test produced nearly 3,000 purchases in a single month — demonstrating that Cheetay's economics could support performance-driven customer acquisition at scale. The result validated both Happy Ads' approach and Cheetay's platform readiness, providing the proof-of-concept data needed to justify a larger ongoing performance investment.
Key Results
3,000
Purchases in a Single Month
30
Days — Test Campaign Duration
Proven
Economics — Validated for Scale
CPA
Optimised — Every Rupee Counted
Key Insights
01
Test Campaigns That Optimise for Purchase Events — Not Installs — Prove Unit Economics
The single most important structural decision in Cheetay's test campaign was setting the primary KPI as completed purchases, not app installs. An install-optimised test would have produced impressive install numbers and misleading conclusions. A purchase-optimised test produced 3,000 real transactions and a clear answer to the business question: can performance marketing drive real grocery orders at an acceptable CPA? The answer, for Cheetay, was an unambiguous yes.
02
Local Brand Character Is a Competitive Advantage in Pakistan's Grocery Market
Cheetay's creative positioning — as a Pakistani-owned brand that understood local household needs — was a genuine differentiator in a market where international VC-backed competitors could outspend but couldn't out-local. Creative that spoke to Pakistani grocery habits, local produce preferences, and neighbourhood familiarity consistently outperformed generic delivery-speed messaging in Happy Ads' testing.
03
3,000 Purchases From a Test Budget Is the Strongest Possible Scale Signal
When a constrained test budget produces 3,000 purchase events in 30 days, the implications for scale are significant. With a 5× budget increase, the unit economics project to 15,000 purchases per month — the same benchmark Airlift was sustaining. The test result for Cheetay was not just a proof of concept: it was a growth projection that justified moving from test to ongoing campaign investment.