Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 30.07.2026 
CB/I Digital was named as a finalist for Best PPC Campaign at this year’s US Agency Awards for our work helping longtime partner Chan Luu launch and grow an entirely new apparel line. It’s the kind of problem every growing DTC brand eventually faces: how do you expand into new territory, fast, without cannibalizing what already works?
It’s an ambitious challenge, one we saw as an opportunity to apply a host of proprietary AI tools to align marketing, sales, and operations towards the goal of evolving the brand beyond jewelry, without losing what made it so special to its existing customers.
Who We Are
CB/I Digital is a New York-based performance marketing and AI technology company with over 19 years of experience growing DTC ecommerce and Enterprise brands. Our team delivers integrated strategy across paid media, SEO and AI Search, Ecommerce development, CRO, and Email/SMS for both growing brands and enterprise clients across industries.
We built our internal AI team in 2019, three years before ChatGPT was released, and that early investment now powers every dimension of our work. Analysis, campaign planning, setup, and implementations are now being handled at scale through a network of proprietary AI tools and agents.
This expertise is also the foundation for Conative AI, an AI-powered inventory forecasting and demand planning platform that connects marketing performance directly to inventory and demand data so growth decisions are made with real-time, forward-looking data instead of relying on historical sales alone.
The Work Behind the Nomination
Chan Luu is a hand-crafted jewelry brand we’ve partnered with since 2018, scaling the business more than 400% over the first five years of the relationship. In 2026, they reached a critical inflection point: launching a Ready-to-Wear (RTW) apparel collection at a higher price point, in a far more competitive category than jewelry. The goal was audacious: double revenue again and cement RTW as a meaningful pillar alongside jewelry, without sacrificing ROAS, brand equity, or customer experience.
Two Audiences, One Strategy
Chan Luu’s existing customers were built around luxury jewelry, but reaching RTW buyers meant creating excitement within a different profile, without cannibalizing the customers who built the brand. We ran two tracks in parallel.
For jewelry, retention, loyalty, and high-intent search protected existing segments. For RTW, aggressive prospecting into a broader luxury fashion audience, layering in affinity segments modeled on brands like Brunello Cucinelli, Isabel Marant, and Tory Burch, alongside high-intent apparel shoppers and lookalikes built from top customer cohorts.
On Meta, Advantage+ Shopping and Dynamic Product Ads campaigns, structured by collection, category, and product group, drove 90% of spend and revenue from net-new users.
Protecting Margin from the Algorithm
On Google, Performance Max campaigns were tiered by product margin and value, with dedicated ROAS floors so premium SKUs weren’t starved of budget by the platform’s natural bias toward lower-value conversions.
We also deployed Demand Gen with a dedicated product feed to prospect against competitor and lookalike audiences at significantly lower CPCs, an approach that delivered a Cost per New User 81% below benchmark.
AI as the Connective Layer
Underpinning both channels was Conative AI, which unified marketing, inventory, and Shopify data to improve forecast accuracy, flag potential over and understock issues in real-time, identify high-potential SKUs, and even forecast demand for new products with no sales history.
Additional internal tools, including CB/I’s Google Campaign Builder and Meta Ads Audience Explorer, accelerated campaign setup and audience testing, while an automated performance dashboard caught ROAS and CPA drift before it could drain the budget.
These innovations gave Chan Luu the ability to scale aggressively with far less operational and financial risk.
The Results
In the first four months of 2026, Chan Luu’s revenue grew 86%, with blended ROAS improving 31% and new customers up 19%. RTW grew more than 500% year-over-year to reach 38% of total brand revenue, while jewelry revenue held stable, proof that a new category can be launched at speed and scale without cannibalizing the business that built the brand.
What This Nomination Means to Our Team
“Chan Luu trusted us to take a big swing at a critical moment for their brand, and that trust is what let us move this fast without losing discipline on efficiency,” said Mike Le, COO and Co-Founder of CB/I Digital. “This campaign is what modern paid media looks like when channel expertise, AI systems, and operational intelligence work as a single growth engine, not separate functions.”
“Being shortlisted means a lot to our team because it validates a bet we made back in 2019: that AI shouldn’t just make marketers faster, it should connect strategy, execution, and operations into a single system to benefit the brand as a whole, not just a single channel.” Le added. “The expertise and knowledge we’ve invested in over the last several years has fundamentally changed our approach to digital, and the results show we’re moving in the right direction for both our clients and our agency.”
The shortlist adds to a growing list of industry recognition for CB/I Digital, including the US Agency Award for Best Use of AI in 2025 for our work with First Citizens Bank, along with 15+ awards and recognitions over the past three years, including Inc. 5000, US Search Awards (2024), Vega Awards (2023), and Stevie Awards (2022).
Trust and Technology, Built Over Years
Chan Luu didn’t hand us a campaign brief, they handed us a business problem eight years into a partnership, the kind of relationship that only comes from working as an extension of their internal team, not just another vendor.
That trust is also why Conative AI exists in the first place, not as a borrowed tool or a pitch angle, but as a solution to a difficult problem faced by our clients. It’s the culmination of years of infrastructure built specifically to use the latest technology to help brands overcome challenges and thrive regardless of size or vertical.
Winners of the 2026 US Agency Awards will be announced at the awards ceremony later this year. You can view the full shortlist at usagencyawards.com.
To learn more about CB/I Digital, visit our site or connect on LinkedIn for more campaign breakdowns, award news, and AI-driven marketing insights. Visit Chan Luu to learn more about the brand and see their inspired collections for yourself.
