AUTOMOTIVE PARTS & REPAIR

Automotive parts company beats its CPA by 65% with custom audiences

By replacing broad audience targeting with daily AI-rescored purchase intent, a Leading Automotive Parts & Repair Company beat its $6.00 CPA goal, delivering a $2.06 CPA.

The challenge

Tires are one of retail’s lowest-frequency purchases. Consumers show little sustained interest until they suddenly need a replacement, making traditional demographic targeting inefficient and expensive.

The client needed to identify consumers actively shopping for tires at the precise moment of intent while beating a strict $6.00 CPA target at scale.

The approach: modeling purchase intent, not audience proxies

Dstillery built a Custom AI Audience trained on live purchase-intent signals rather than broad audience proxies like interests, age, or income.

  • Modeled purchase intent: Trained on observed shopping behavior from consumers actively researching and comparing tires.
  • Flexible activation: Activated through both Deal IDs and user-based segments to maximize inventory reach and scale.
  • 24-hour signal refresh: Rescored the model daily, continuously updating the audience to reflect changing purchase intent rather than relying on static audience definitions.

The results

Dstillery built a Custom AI Audience trained on live purchase-intent signals rather than broad audience proxies like interests, age, or income.

$2.06

Delivered cost per acquisition vs. $6.00 goal

65.7%

Lower CPA than target

2M+

Additional impressions at lower spend vs competitors

Why it worked

Custom AI Audiences targeted live shopping behavior instead of broad audience proxies. Daily AI rescoring continuously refreshed the audience as purchase intent evolved, ensuring media spend stayed focused on active tire shoppers. Combined with flexible activation across Deal IDs and user-based segments, the client efficiently scaled the campaign while consistently outperforming its CPA goal.

“Dstillery is a good partner and provides really efficient targeting. There are no problems with scale, and Dstillery is considered a top performer from a CPA, reach, and efficiency perspective.”

Colin Hayward | Associate Director, Digital Investments at Tombras

Success story