Case study: Optimizing Wolt creative performance on TikTok
2026
Intro |How we supported creative optimization for Wolt at TikTok
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Background
The key question
Our approach
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Wolt is one of TikTok’s most advanced advertisers, running thousands of always-on campaigns each year for user growth, brand and courier recruiting across 25+ markets.
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•
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With creative produced by many teams and partners – with different budgets, formats and local priorities – there was no unified, evidence-based view of what “good” TikTok content looks like for Wolt.
Why are some ads performing better than others, and what could we do to increase our creative performance?
Custom performance playbook
VS.
CPA (indexed) 2.8
The Creative AI project with Nepa was set up to give Wolt a data-driven playbook that enabling the teams to make creative choices that optimizes business success across markets.
CPA (indexed) 90
Opportunity sizing and roadmap
Methodology |Insights are based on a large-scale AI analysis process
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1
2
3
Using AI to classify creative features in all media platform activity for the brand in last year (1000’s of assets)
Establishing correlation to campaign performance via drivers analysis to understand the performance of the creative features
Establishing scores accounting for the performance on the creative dimensions proven to drive effect
Presence of features in ads
Performance impact of each feature
Current gaps in creative excellence
Output |With the analysis we were able to uncover the patterns to explain exactly what drives creative performance for each ad ”Best creative” - Highest creative score
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CPA (indexed) 2.8
”Worst creative” - Lowest creative score
CPA (indexed) 90
People and faces visible Right pace Lo-fi ("UGC") Age group Clear CTA (Call to Action) Hook (spoken) Product visible Happy mood Woman present Long video Written CTA X Man present (Not too) Strong food focus Brand logo occurence Mascot occurence
X People and faces visible X Right pace X Lo-fi ("UGC") X Age group X Clear CTA (Call to Action) X Hook X Product visible X Happy mood X Woman present X Long video X Written CTA X Man present X (Not too) Strong food focus X Brand logo occurence X Mascot occurence
Creative Score: 84
Creative Score: 7
Source: Nepa case, partly sanitized. CPA = Cost per Acquisition
Deep-dive |Optimal performance characteristics is not always followed Feature: Brand logo presence
116
No Low occurrence frequency 11%
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5
118
116 86
30%
Feature: Food visible
Feature: Faces visible
114 108
97
93
Medium frequency
High frequency
30%
29%
Low frequency of brand logo is best for performance, but 29% of ads still has a very high frequency (!)
No Low occurrence frequency
11%
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30%
97 87
Medium frequency
High frequency
29%
30%
High frequency of faces are by far best for performance, but 41% of ads has low or no frequency (!)
Source: Nepa case, partly sanitized. CPA = Cost per Acquisition
CPA for group (indexed)
101 87
No Low occurrence frequency 14%
•
29%
Medium frequency
High frequency
29%
28%
Low frequency of food is best for performance, but 28% of ads today has a high frequency
Distribution of cases
Results |We established both the overall “success formula” and the business potential of improving creative excellence for Wolt A clear formula for success
A proven link to performance
A clear business opportunity
Feature impact on CPA
CPA vs Creative Score
Avg. CPA reduction potential
Product visible Faces visible Medium duration Some scene changes… Woman early Written CTA High Lo-fi score ("UGC") Middle-Older age Spoken Hook Happy early Spoken call to action Man early High mascot visibility Written Hook High food visibility High brand logo visibility
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Worst CPA
>60% CPA diff of top vs bottom 10%
Best CPA
>40% Potential CPA reduction when adopting best-practice creative guidelines
Strongest performance drivers 0-20 20-30 30-40 40-50 50-60 60-70 70-80 80-100
Source: Nepa case, partly sanitized. CPA = Cost per Acquisition
Creative Score Bracket
Brand vs acquisition |While creative is equally important for impact, success patterns for acquisition vs brand campaigns are widely different Acquisition
10,6
9,7
9,2
8,9
8,5
37% potential CPA reduction
8,5 6,1
4,8
1,7 Product visible
11,2
Faces visible
Medium duration
Written High Lo-fi Middle- Spoken CTA score Older age Hook ("UGC")
Happy early
1,5
0,5
Spoken Man early High -3,1 call to mascot action visibility
Brand
Written High food Hook visibility -4,4 -8,9
9,8 7,5
Written hook
Some Woman scene early changes (but not too many)
when adopting best-practice creative guidelines
4,2
38% potential CPA reduction
5,9
5,7
4,7
Younger High face Mascot No scene Written age visibility presence changes CTA
3,6
when adopting best-practice creative guidelines
2,2
Short Low lo-fi Man early Happy -2,6 -3,0 duration score early ("UGC")
Spoken hook -4,0
Spoken CTA -4,4
Product visible -5,2
Woman High food early visibility -5,9 -11,9
Strong positive performance lift 7
High brand logo visibility -9,5
Source: Nepa case, partly sanitized. CPA = Cost per Acquisition
High brand logo visibility -12,6
Strong negative performance lift
Playbook |We established concrete data-driven ”do’s and dont’s on TikTok” for Wolt to enable creative teams to implement the actions •
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A practical, easy-to-use toolbox for everyone who creates or commissions TikTok content for Wolt – so that every new asset is set up to maximise creative effectiveness. Example snippets of feature instructions below:
Business case | Priority and plan for closing the creative excellence gap Process ahead to tackle
~38% lower CPA for “good” creatives CPA creatives video score < 70 CPA creatives video score > 70
~19
CPA (indexed)
~12
Adoption process
Status quo
1 Q3 2026
2 Q4 2026
3 Q1 2027
40%
60%
80%
share of bp videos
share of bp videos
share of bp videos
~15%
~23%
~30%
CPA reduction
CPA reduction
CPA reduction
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% of creatives video score < 70
86%
% of creatives video score > 70
14%
Share of best-practice (bp) creatives
Quarterly process iteration
86% of videos not fulfilling “good” creative levels 1. Assess
2. Adopt
3. Measure
4. Refine
Benchmark of current CPA, CPA reduction potential and share of best practice creatives
Produce new best practice creatives (by Wolt) based on quarterly goals
Score all new creatives
Compare new performance to baseline
Track CPA development over time
Update recommenda tions
Nepa Creative AI product overview
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Creative AI is the provenway to evaluatecreatives in digitalplatforms Creative AI as part of the creative toolbox The classic market research toolbox Pretesting
Campaign Evaluation
Concept Testing
Overall creative evaluation and optimization Creative AI evaluation
Large scale platform performance data and creative asset analysis across hundreds / thousands of campaigns, unlocking the patterns on what works and why – in detail for each platform
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Nepa creative evaluation / optimization experience includes
Our proven approach |We offer a ’battle -tested’ process how to support your work in continuously pushing for maximum creative performance Learn from previous performance 1 Creative performance and features importance
2 Custom performance playbook
3 Business case and implementation plans
Available as stand-alone ”Ad hoc” project 12
Continuous Monthly/Quarterly Optimization
1. Assess
2. Adopt
3. Measure
4. Refine
Benchmark of current CPA, CPA reduction potential and share of best practice creatives
Produce new best practice creatives (done by client) based on quarterly goals
Score all new creatives
Compare new performance to baseline
Track CPA development over time
Update recommenda tions
Growth by insights