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Blu Dot surpasses 2,000% ROAS with self-serve CTV ads
Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:
After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.
The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.
“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”
Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.
GM to the Top 1% ☕
A procurement lead on a large renewal asked me a question I was not ready for.
"If this goes wrong in month three, who do I call?"
She did not mean the support line. She had a portal, a chatbot and an agent that could open tickets. She meant who, by name, would personally care that her rollout was failing. She had been burned once by a vendor where the answer turned out to be nobody.
I gave her my mobile number. The renewal closed the following week. I do not think the pricing had much to do with it.
💡 ABUNDANT AGENTS, SCARCE OWNERS
Gartner predicts that by 2028 AI agents will outnumber human sellers ten to one. The last two weeks made that feel less like a forecast. A major CRM vendor shipped seven named agents with job titles. The big model labs opened agent platforms with thousands of connectors. Agents that run for weeks are now a product category.
The number most people skip in that same prediction is the more interesting one. Gartner also expects fewer than 40% of sellers to say those agents improved their productivity. More agents, not much more help.
Here is the shift underneath it. Agents are very good at doing tasks. They are not accountable for outcomes. Nobody fires an agent. Nobody's reputation is on the line when an agent's recommendation fails in month three. Buyers know this, even when they cannot articulate it.
When execution becomes abundant, accountability becomes the premium. The question every enterprise buyer is quietly asking is the one my procurement lead said out loud. Who owns this when it breaks?
The rep who answers that with a name, their own, is selling something no agent can.
🔧 THE OWNERSHIP SIGNAL
Four ways to make it obvious to a buyer that a human owns their outcome.
1. Name yourself in the plan: In every proposal, add a line that says who is personally accountable for the first 90 days and how to reach them. Most proposals list features and a support URL. Yours lists a person.
2. Pre-commit to a checkpoint: Put a 30 day and 90 day check-in on the calendar before signature. It costs you two hours and tells the buyer you plan to be around when it matters.
3. Say what you will do if it fails: Describe, specifically, what happens if adoption stalls. Who gets involved, how fast, what you will escalate. Buyers rarely hear a seller talk about failure. The ones who do get believed.
4. Keep one promise early: Make a small, specific commitment in the first call and keep it ahead of schedule. It is the cheapest proof of accountability there is, and buyers remember it at signature.
🎯 THIS WEEK'S HOMEWORK
Open the last proposal you sent and search it for a human name with a phone number attached to the outcome. If you cannot find one, add a short ownership section to your template this weekend so every proposal from Monday onward has it.
❓ QUESTION OF THE DAY
If your biggest customer's rollout broke tomorrow, would they call you first?
Reply yes or no and why. The no answers are the more useful ones.
See you tomorrow.
Edward
Founder, Morning Sales
P.S. Agents can draft your follow-ups. Owning the outcome is still your job, and sharper prompts make it easier to do both. The 500 AI Sales Prompts manual includes the proposal, mutual action plan and post-sale checkpoint prompts I use to show buyers a human is driving. Weekend reading for 27 dollars: https://store.edwardgorbis.com