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Case study · Unlikely Collaborators

2.86 million new followers and subscribers in 16 months

How JetAds built a paid audience-growth engine for Unlikely Collaborators and The Perception Box across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.

  • Media
  • Podcast
  • YouTube Ads
  • TikTok Ads
  • Meta Ads
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Unlikely Collaborators website hero
Client
Unlikely Collaborators / The Perception Box
Industry
Podcast & video media (Science of Perception Box)
Location
Worldwide audience
Channels
YouTube (Google Ads), TikTok, Meta
Engagement
2023 – present

2.86M

New YouTube subscribers + TikTok followers

Jul 2025 – Oct 2026

1.39M

YouTube subscribers at $0.30 each

Apr – Oct 2026

1.47M

TikTok followers at $0.55 each

Jul 2025 – Oct 2026

2,510

Event leads at $7.77 each

Aug 2025 – Jun 2026 · Meta

The challenge

Unlikely Collaborators helps people understand their "Perception Box", the mental framework that shapes how we see the world.

Its content lives everywhere: the Science of Perception Box podcast, long-form video, short-form clips and live Spark Salon events.

The goal was simple to say and hard to do:

grow a real audience on every major platform, at a cost per follower that could scale into the millions.

What we did

  1. 01

    Instagram and events

    A dedicated lead campaign for Spark Salon events (from August 2025), then Instagram profile-visit campaigns split by brand and region (2026).

  2. 02

    TikTok follower engine (July 2025)

    Mirrored follower campaigns for both brands, split by region, budgets balanced between them.

  3. 03

    YouTube subscriber engine (April 2026)

    Demand Gen campaigns optimized directly to channel subscriptions, split by short-form vs long-form and by region, plus video campaigns for full episodes and podcast seasons.

  4. 04

    Go global

    Expanded beyond the US into the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Asia to grow the audience at scale.

The results

Audience growth from paid ads

TikTok followsYouTube subsCumulative total

October 2026 is through Oct 26.

  • 2,862,064 combined YouTube subscribers and TikTok followers, at a blended $0.43 each.

  • YouTube: 1,391,565 subscribers at $0.30 each (April – October 2026). YouTube spend doubled from Q2 to Q3 2026 while cost per subscriber fell 17.5% ($0.33 → $0.28), helped by adding the Europe campaign.

  • TikTok: 1,470,499 followers at $0.55 each, about 92,000 new followers a month (July 2025 – October 2026).

  • Instagram: 2M+ clicks to the Instagram profile from ads in 2026, at under $0.10 each.

  • Spark Salon: 2,510 event leads from Meta at $7.77 per lead (August 2025 – June 2026).

Unlikely Collaborators original case study imageScience of Perception Box podcast artworkThe Perception Box video thumbnailThe Perception Box animation

PRE-STANDARD. Platform-reported by Google Ads (YouTube channel subscriptions), TikTok (follows) and Meta (link clicks, leads), in USD, through October 26, 2026. Worldwide audience, costs vary by region (in the US, about $0.40 per YouTube subscriber, $0.85 per TikTok follower and $0.20 per Instagram profile click). Instagram link clicks are clicks to the profile, not follows. Follows and subscriptions are gross platform-reported counts, not net of unfollows.

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