Total transparency. No vague case studies, no cherry-picked results. Here's the full breakdown of how Zelon allocated 500,000 MAD in client ad budgets across 2026 — what worked, what didn't, and what we'd do differently.
In the media buying world, everyone talks about results but almost no one shows the work. Agencies reference impressive percentages without revealing the baseline. They show winning campaigns but bury the losers. At Zelon, we believe that radical transparency is the foundation of genuine partnership — so here is exactly how we spent, where we spent it, and what it returned.
These figures are aggregated across multiple clients in multiple industries to protect confidentiality — but every number is real.
The Budget Breakdown
41%
Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram) — 205,000 MAD
28%
Google Ads (Search & Display) — 140,000 MAD
18%
TikTok Ads — 90,000 MAD
8%
YouTube Pre-Roll — 40,000 MAD
5%
Influencer Amplification — 25,000 MAD
3.4x
Average ROAS across all campaigns
What Performed Best: The Honest Ranking
🥇 Google Search (Best ROI Consistently)
High-intent keywords — people actively searching for what our clients offer — produced the most consistent conversions at the lowest cost per acquisition. Average CPA was 180 MAD vs 420 MAD for cold social audiences. If you have one budget to allocate, search captures demand that already exists.
🥈 Meta Retargeting (Best Multiplier)
Retargeting campaigns aimed at website visitors and video viewers produced a 5.2x ROAS on average — the highest multiplier of any campaign type. Budget here is never wasted because you're reaching people who already know you.
🥉 TikTok (Best Discovery Tool)
TikTok delivered the lowest CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) of any platform at an average of 22 MAD — making it extraordinary for brand awareness among 18-35 audiences. Conversion was lower than search but brand lift was measurable and significant.
What Didn't Work (And Why)
Boosted Posts: Uniformly underperformed purpose-built ad campaigns. Average CTR of 0.4% vs 1.8% for properly structured ads. Boosting is not media buying — it's budget disposal.
Broad Interest Targeting Without Creative Testing: Campaigns that launched with one creative across a broad audience without A/B testing wasted an average of 35% of their budget before we identified winning creative. Testing is not optional — it's the first phase of every campaign.
Short Campaign Windows: Clients who requested 2-week campaigns saw 40% less performance than those who committed to 6+ weeks. Algorithms need time to learn, optimize, and find the best audience segments. Impatience is expensive.
The Zelon Media Buying Rule: Never spend a dirham on amplification before you know your message converts. We always start with a small test budget, find the winning creative and audience combination, then scale. Scaling losers is the most common — and most costly — media buying mistake.
Put Zelon's Media Buying Expertise to Work
We manage ad budgets from 5,000 to 500,000 MAD with the same rigour, transparency, and performance obsession. Let's talk about your campaign.
