• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer @mahoney_sarah, April 2, 2025

Like many digital-native brands, Saatva built its early success on paid search. However, when COVID rewrote consumer behavior and performance marketing began to falter, the luxury mattress company needed a new growth engine. CMO Joe McCambley responded with a high-stakes media shift, pushing hard into upper-funnel tactics: podcasts, radio, linear TV, and, most recently, YouTube.

But after investing nearly $900,000 in ads on the YouTube platform several months ago -- 10 times more than any prior campaign -- the company came away with sobering results. “We wanted to see if YouTube could replace TV,” McCambley told attendees in at the recent MediaPost Retail Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. “The early signs suggest it can’t.”

Saatva was an early D2C pioneer, launching in 2010 with a model that initially relied on non-branded paid search. With traditional mattress brands slow to adopt ecommerce, the company grew rapidly until the market flooded with competitors like Casper, Purple, and Nectar. Between 2014 and 2017, Saatva’s costs-per-click ballooned from under $3 to over $30.

By 2017, the company was losing money for the first time. McCambley, who joined that year, realized Saatva needed to diversify beyond performance marketing. Initially viewed with skepticism, the affiliate channel proved a better investment than expected. “Affiliate marketing is a more profitable business than non-branded search,” he said.

Then COVID hit.

With in-store shopping stalled, Saatva surged -- briefly. But when search demand fell again, so did sales. The lesson? “We were way too dependent on performance marketing,” McCambley said. “With performance, your revenue goes up when people are searching and you look like a hero. When people stop searching? You're a goat."

So he steeredSaatva into more upper-funnel media, first with podcasts, then linear TV. The company developed a curriculum to educate its leadership and reduce their resistance to non-performance channels. The guiding framework came down to a simple formula: excess share of voice leads to increased share of search, which drives market share.

TV delivered. Impressions led to search, which led to sales. The company even saw a statistically significant link between TV impressions and branded search and between branded search and market share. Heading into Black Friday weekend of 2024, the Saatva team’s confidence in the new model was rock-solid.

Then came the stumble, as the brand fell 10% short of November revenue goals. Post-election, the cost of linear spots spiked. Saatva delivered 200 million fewer impressions than planned, enough to throw off their entire model.

To hedge against that CPM volatility, McCambley directed his team to YouTube. They developed a $900,000 test to replicate streaming TV reach, a ten-fold increase in prior spending on that channel. Early results have disappointed. Though cost-per-visit was a promising $8.32, incrementality was under 1%.

McCambley concedes Saatva’s test wasn’t perfect. Creative may have been a factor, since Saatva reused TV spots instead of tailoring new ads to the platform. He believes audience behavior plays a role and that big-screen viewing is more mattress-friendly. "If you're watching TV, you've probably got your phone handy to search,” McCambley said. “But on YouTube, you're already on your phone -- and more easily distracted."

Still, the team isn’t giving up. Next steps include more targeted creative, show-specific sponsorships, and YouTube content that aligns with podcast-style formats.

YouTube isn’t a TV replacement -- at least not for Saatva. But with more innovative creative, better segmentation, and platform-native strategy, it might still earn a place in the media mix.

"We all believe it should work," McCambley said. "Now we just have to figure out how."