In 2016, Purple was a little-known mattress startup with a unique product: a mattress made from a stretchy, breathable polymer grid.
The team believed that traditional DTC performance marketing wasn’t enough.
Their hypothesis? Product education + visual proof would outperform generic mattress ads.
They launched a bold video ad: the Raw Egg Test, a quirky, science-meets-comedy spot that shows you can drop raw eggs on a Purple mattress without breaking them.
To scale it, they went all-in on YouTube ads, supported by Facebook and display.
The result?
– 500M+ video views
– $75M+ in online sales in one year
– $187M total revenue by 2017, growing to $405M in 2018
Purple used data-driven creative testing, performance-led storytelling, and channel-specific optimization to turn a niche product into a household name.
