Cross-border logistics · Singapore and Malaysia · 2025
How Buy&Ship cut cost per acquisition by 86%
Buy&Ship's Google Search ads had stopped getting cheaper. We moved its advertising to video ads on Facebook and Instagram, in the same two markets, and its cost per acquisition (CPA), the ad spend behind each request, fell from S$25.30 to S$3.49.
A simpler way to shop the world
Buy&Ship is a regional proxy-shopping and cross-border logistics platform serving shoppers across Asia-Pacific. It gives people a local forwarding address in markets like the US, UK, Japan and Korea, consolidates their parcels, and ships everything to their door — so they can buy from international retailers that don't ship locally, or that charge a fortune to.
It solves a real, recurring problem. But it's also a behaviour most shoppers haven't tried yet: the value clicks the moment someone sees how it works, and rarely before. That distinction shaped everything about how we approached growth.
Search had hit its ceiling
When Buy&Ship ran acquisition in Singapore and Malaysia themselves, the engine was Google Search. Search is excellent at one thing — capturing demand that already exists. Someone typing "ship from US to Singapore" is already close to becoming a customer.
But only so many people search for a service they may not know exists. The searches most likely to lead to a sale are the ones every competitor bids on, so each click costs more as you try to reach more people. Buy&Ship was spending S$25.30 in ads for each request, and that figure had stopped falling. To grow, it needed ads that make people want the service, not only ads that catch people already looking.
Video ads that show how it works
We moved most of the advertising to Meta, which runs Facebook and Instagram, and built it around video ads. We kept the same two markets, so the before-and-after comparison is fair.
The logic was simple: proxy shopping is something you show, not a keyword you bid on. A 10–20 second video can walk through the entire loop — shop any overseas store, ship to a local Buy&Ship address, receive it at home — in a way a text search ad never can. And Meta reaches the much larger group of people who'd never think to search for the service, but light up the second they see it.
The videos did most of the work. We ran several versions side by side, each telling the story a different way: the store that won't ship to you, the money you save, the moment the parcel arrives. Each was cut for the Facebook and Instagram feeds and for Reels. Money moved to the versions that brought in requests most cheaply, and the next videos were made from what those taught us.
From S$25.30 to S$3.49
The ad spend behind each request fell from S$25.30 to S$3.49, 86% less. With the same budget, Buy&Ship got about seven times as many requests.
Just as important, growth no longer depended on how many people searched for the service: video ads on Facebook and Instagram kept reaching new people in both markets, where search had stopped growing.
Search harvests demand. Video creates it. For a category people don't yet know to look for, the cheapest acquisition usually isn't on the search bar.
Related: Digital advertising management · AI content production · How to lower your cost per acquisition