Case Study: 4 Weeks of Indoor Ads in Kyiv, Week by Week
Most advertising advice stays abstract: "test it," "optimize the creative," "scale what works." But what does that actually look like in numbers — week by week, with a real decision after every report? Below is a detailed scenario of an indoor-screen campaign in Kyiv: how much it cost, what the data showed on day 7, what we changed on day 14, and where the business landed after a month.
This is an illustrative example, not a real client. The numbers are realistic and built on ranges HostAd sees in similar campaigns, but the specific business, name and exact results are hypothetical. The point is to show the logic — not to promise a "guaranteed result."
The scenario inputs
Business: a small ceramics studio in Kyiv running evening and weekend workshops (pottery wheel, painting). A single location; audience — young city dwellers aged 22–38 looking for a hobby and something to "make with their hands."
Goal: workshop bookings. Not "awareness in general," but a concrete action — scan the QR and book a slot.
Why indoor screens in cafes. The studio's audience is literally the same people who sit in craft cafes: freelancers, students, young professionals with a free evening. It's the same audience of Kyiv cafe-goers by district, just with a different offer. Instead of paying for "impressions on the street," the studio shows its ad where a person is already relaxed and scrolling their phone.
Budget: ~9,600 UAH over 4 weeks. HostAd's model is transparent — you pay for seconds of screen time, the owner's price is visible on the map before you book, with no agency markups and no quarterly contracts. This is the format of a test campaign: a small budget to validate a hypothesis before investing more.
Starting configuration: 5 screens in cafes within a 2–3 km radius of the studio, a 15-second clip, a QR code pointing to the booking page.
Week 1 — launch and the first honest report
The first clip was "like everyone else's": a logo, three product shots, the caption "Ceramics workshops. Scan the QR to sign up." It looked tidy. It performed poorly.
| Metric | Week 1 |
|---|---|
| Weekly budget | ~2,400 UAH |
| Unique contacts | ~4,300 |
| QR scans | 42 |
| Bookings | 6 |
| CPA | ~400 UAH |
What the data showed. Plenty of contacts, but a low scan conversion (under 1%). People saw the ad but had no reason to reach for their phone right now. "Sign up" isn't an offer — it's an instruction. And a CPA of 400 UAH is at the upper edge of what the studio is willing to pay per booking at an average ticket of 850 UAH.
Decision on day 7: don't kill the campaign — rewrite the creative. The problem isn't the channel; it's the message.
Week 2 — rewriting the offer
The key change was from "we exist" to "here's a reason to come in right now." The new clip:
- First 3 seconds — the hook: "Never sat at a pottery wheel?" instead of a logo.
- A concrete offer: "First workshop — 550 UAH instead of 850. This week."
- One action: a big QR + "Pick an evening" — not "learn more," but choose a slot.
This is the classic work of an A/B creative test over 14 days: we don't change everything at once, but test the "offer + hook" hypothesis against the baseline clip.
| Metric | Week 2 |
|---|---|
| Weekly budget | ~2,400 UAH |
| Unique contacts | ~4,400 |
| QR scans | 88 |
| Bookings | 9 |
| CPA | ~267 UAH |
What the data showed. Same audience, same budget — but scans doubled and CPA fell by a third. The discount-hook and the deadline ("this week") gave people a reason to act. This confirmed the main thing: the channel works; the weak spot was the creative.
Week 3 — scale the winners, switch off the laggards
HostAd's analytics show scans not in aggregate but per screen, individually. Over two weeks it became clear that 2 of the 5 screens delivered most of the scans (cafes near coworking spaces), while one screen in a residential district produced almost nothing.
The decision: reallocate the same budget — drop the weak screen, add seconds of screen time on the two leaders, and add one more screen in a similar location.
| Metric | Week 3 |
|---|---|
| Weekly budget | ~2,400 UAH |
| Unique contacts | ~4,600 |
| QR scans | 121 |
| Bookings | 11 |
| CPA | ~218 UAH |
What the data showed. With no budget increase — another +37% in scans, purely from geography. That's the whole point of monthly booking on the map: you're not frozen in a yearlong contract for a "screen package" — you move the budget to where it works, month by month.
Week 4 — stabilization and the bottom line
The fourth week ran almost unchanged — checking whether the result holds.
| Metric | Week 4 |
|---|---|
| Weekly budget | ~2,400 UAH |
| Unique contacts | ~4,700 |
| QR scans | 148 |
| Bookings | 13 |
| CPA | ~185 UAH |
The monthly summary
| Metric | Total over 4 weeks |
|---|---|
| Budget | ~9,600 UAH |
| Unique contacts | ~18,000 |
| QR scans | 399 |
| Bookings | 39 |
| Average CPA | ~246 UAH |
| Revenue (39 × 850 UAH) | ~33,150 UAH |
| ROAS | ~3.4× |
The main takeaway isn't the ROAS figure — it's the trajectory. CPA dropped from ~400 to ~185 UAH not because the channel "warmed up," but because there was a concrete decision after every report: week 1 — rewrite the offer, week 2 — confirm the hypothesis, week 3 — reallocate geography. Screen advertising isn't "set it and forget it" — it's a controllable instrument, once you can see scans per individual screen.
What to carry over to your own business
- Start with a test, not a "big campaign." Four weeks and a small budget give enough data to see whether the channel works for you. The logic of a test is broken down in detail in the guide to a test campaign.
- The first clip is almost always weak. Don't judge the channel by week 1 — judge it by the dynamics after you fix the creative.
- The offer matters more than the design. A reason to act now (a discount, a deadline, a concrete action) beats a "pretty logo."
- Look at scans per screen, not in aggregate. This is exactly where +30–40% of efficiency hides, with no extra budget. How to read those reports is covered in the piece on measuring outdoor-ad ROI.
Why HostAd fits this kind of scenario
This case would be impossible to run with classic outdoor advertising, where you buy a quarterly "package" and wait for a report at the end. HostAd is built for exactly this iterative logic:
- Transparent owner pricing on the map — you see each screen's price before booking, with no agency markups.
- Monthly booking — take it for a month as a test and don't renew if it didn't work.
- Per-screen QR analytics — you see not "shown somewhere," but which venue exactly brings bookings.
- Self-service, no proposals or calls — pick screens → upload the clip → pay → on air within hours.
Want to model a similar scenario for your business — open the screen map, look at the available cafes nearby and their prices. A 4-week test costs less than one failed month spent flying blind.