Meta Ads success story · Footwear retailer

How DSW grew in-store purchases 45% with Meta ads built for the store and the website.

Name: Overtop Media Digital Marketing
Address: 933 Louise Ave Suite 101-18, Charlotte, NC, 28204, US
Telephone: (704) 237-0707
Price range: $$

The footwear retailer, with more than 500 stores in the US and over 20 in Canada, stopped judging its Facebook and Instagram ads on online sales alone. One campaign optimized for purchases wherever they happened.

Business: DSW
Market: United States and Canada
Goal: More sales in stores and online

Row of leather sneakers with white laces on a lit store display shelf

The results.

Compared with its usual campaign, which was optimized for online sales only.

45%increase in in-store purchases
23%increase in total purchases
15%increase in return on ad spend
4%increase in online purchases

Meta conversion lift test, March 3-31, 2025.

The challenge.

Designer Shoe Warehouse sells designer shoes and accessories online and in hundreds of stores, and owns several private-label footwear brands. Like most retailers, it had optimized its Meta campaigns for online sales, because online sales were what the ads could see.

That left a blind spot. A shopper who saw an ad on Instagram and bought the shoes in a store gave the ads no credit, so the system kept chasing website buyers. For a retailer with hundreds of locations, a large share of the sales the ads were causing was missing from the picture.

Meta illustration of a shopper buying at a store counter and online, with cart, bag and email icons

What they did.

Omnichannel ads · In-store sales data sent to Meta · AI audience and placements

One campaign for both channels: Omnichannel sales ads optimized a single campaign for online and in-store purchases together, instead of treating the store and the website as separate goals.
Store sales sent back to Meta: In-store purchase data was passed securely from DSW’s systems to Meta, so the system could see which ads led to a sale at the register and find more people like those buyers.
A simpler account: Fewer, broader campaigns, AI-chosen audiences and automatic placements gave the system room to find shoppers instead of boxing it in.
Creative that follows the season: The ads featured trending and seasonal products, the shoes people were already looking for, to drive both store visits and online orders.
Measured with a lift test: A conversion lift test compared people who saw the ads with a similar group who did not, which shows the sales the ads actually caused.

Why it worked.

Our read on the decisions behind the numbers, and what any business can take from them.

What gets measured gets optimized: The moment store sales counted, delivery shifted toward people who buy in stores. The ads had been working for the store all along; now they were rewarded for it.
Shoppers cross channels: People browse on the phone and buy in person, or the other way round. A campaign that sees both behaviors matches how people really shop.
Simplicity helps the AI: Fewer campaigns mean more results per campaign, which helps the system learn faster and spend more efficiently.
Cause, not correlation: A lift test separates the sales the ads created from the sales that would have happened anyway. That makes the 15% return on ad spend gain a number a finance team can trust.

How we would run this play for your business.

You do not need a national budget to use the same ideas. This is how Overtop Media Digital Marketing puts them to work in our meta ads management.

Connect your store sales: We connect your point-of-sale or CRM data securely, so your ads get credit for in-store and phone sales, not only online orders. Our guide to first-party data and Meta attribution explains how.
One budget for web and store: We plan spend around total sales, so money moves to whichever channel is bringing customers that week.
Bring people to the nearest location: For multi-location businesses, ads point each shopper to the closest store, with directions one tap away.
Prove it with a test: Where budgets allow, we run lift tests so you see what the ads caused. Our budget allocation guide shows how that shapes where your next dollar goes.