How Ben & Jerry’s Turned TikTok Fans Into DoorDash Orders
Ben & Jerry's had a loyal following on TikTok but no way to turn that engagement into sales. A campaign using DoorDash Offsite Ads via Symbiosys changed that, connecting the brand's organic TikTok presence directly to same-day delivery orders and producing results that outperformed benchmarks across every major metric.
The Problem the Campaign Was Trying to Solve
Ben & Jerry's holds eight of America's top ten ice cream flavors and has built one of the more engaged communities on TikTok, where fans share content and conversations around the brand without being prompted. The challenge was that none of that enthusiasm had a direct path to purchase.
Ice cream is an impulse-driven category. When someone sees a post about Phish Food or Cherry Garcia and wants it, the window to convert that craving into a sale is short. Without a seamless way to move from TikTok content to a checkout option, that intent was evaporating. Ben & Jerry's worked with performance branding agency WITHIN to find a solution.
How the Campaign Worked
The solution combined TikTok's targeting tools with DoorDash's first-party retail data. WITHIN used custom and lookalike audiences on TikTok alongside DoorDash's purchase data to identify high-intent, recent ice cream buyers. Shoppable ads ran during peak ice cream season and overlapped with National Ice Cream Month, directing TikTok users to tailored landing pages on DoorDash.
The creative used a mix of assets featuring both dairy and nondairy products, reflecting the breadth of the Ben & Jerry's range. The ads were designed to feel native to TikTok rather than interruptive, reinforcing the organic community tone the brand had already established on the platform.
DoorDash Offsite Ads are powered by Symbiosys, an ad-tech company DoorDash acquired for $175 million in 2025. The tool extends DoorDash's retail media capabilities beyond its own app, letting CPG brands run campaigns across TikTok, Meta, Google Shopping, and YouTube while tying results back to DoorDash sales data through closed-loop attribution.
The Results
The campaign delivered across all three metrics that matter most for a CPG brand running social commerce: new customer acquisition, order value, and return on ad spend.
- 4.4x return on ad spend
- 49% of orders came from customers new to the brand on DoorDash
- 16% higher average order value compared to benchmark
- 2 million incremental impressions delivered offsite
- ROAS came in 47% above the campaign benchmark
The new-to-brand figure is particularly significant. Nearly half of all orders went to customers who had not previously ordered Ben & Jerry's through DoorDash, demonstrating that the TikTok audience the ads reached included genuine incremental buyers rather than just reactivating existing customers.
“This wasn't a manufactured moment — it was truly organic,” said Sean Slattery, US Digital Commerce Manager at Ben & Jerry's. “The campaign showed we could respond to authentic fan engagement by making it easier than ever for people to enjoy Ben & Jerry's.”
What Comes Next
Ben & Jerry's and WITHIN are now expanding the Offsite Ads strategy beyond TikTok to additional digital channels. The approach of identifying where existing brand engagement lives and building shoppable pathways from those surfaces to DoorDash is being tested across new platforms to find where else the model holds.
For CPG brands watching from the sidelines, the Ben & Jerry's results offer a concrete data point on what offsite retail media can do when audience targeting and purchase intent data are combined. The 49% new-to-brand rate in particular addresses one of the core questions brands ask before investing in social commerce: whether ads are reaching genuinely new customers or just putting more spend against people who would have bought anyway.
