3 Advertorials. 4 Million Visits a Month. For a Pillow.

Derila Ergo sells a $30 pillow. The engine behind 4.1M monthly visits? Three 10,000-word advertorials targeting three different pain points.

February 05, 2026

We just dropped this new breakdown of Derila Ergo's advertorial-led ecomm funnel inside the Funnel of the Week Members Area.

Now let's talk about how to sell millions of dollars of PILLOWS every month:

Derila Ergo sells a memory foam pillow for about $30.

They're doing 4.1 million site visits a month:

Three advertorials side by side

The engine behind it is these three advertorials — long-form articles about sleep problems that read like news stories and convert like direct-response sales letters.

Each one targets a different pain point. Together, they catch almost anyone who's ever lost a night of sleep.

Let's take a closer look:

Three Doors. Same Pillow.

Each of these 3 Derila advertorials is built around a different health problem. Same product. Three different entry points for three different people.

58% of all their ads send traffic to advertorials, not product pages. Only 18% go direct to checkout.

Advertorial #1: "From 'Dead For 60 Seconds' Every Night…"

This is the big gun. Nearly half of all Derila's ads point here.

The page is 15,000 pixels tall. Roughly 3,500 words of narrative before you even see a buy button.

Sleep apnea advertorial hero

"From 'Dead For 60 Seconds' Every Night... To Sleeping Peacefully For 8-Hours Straight With This Strange Butterfly Method." The word "pillow" doesn't appear anywhere in the headline.

The headline is fear + curiosity + a named mechanism nobody's heard of. You literally cannot scroll past this without finding out what the "Butterfly Method" is.

(It's the shape of the pillow. You don't find that out until you're 3,000 words deep.)

The structure:

  • Opens with a medical emergency — a guy collapses at night, his wife finds him not breathing
  • Pivots to a sleep specialist who explains the problem (airway collapse, neck alignment)
  • The specialist says "traditional treatments haven't improved much in years" — killing the medical route in one sentence
  • Shows a CPAP machine ($2,000, tubes strapped to your face) as the scary anchor
  • The pillow appears 3,000 words in as "The Simple Solution My Wife Discovered"

By the time the product shows up, you're not comparing it to your current pillow. You're comparing spending $30 on a pillow to a $2,000 CPAP machine and the possibility of dying in your sleep.

Classic Eugene Schwartz Principle at Work

This is textbook Eugene Schwartz: his "Stages of Awareness" framework from Breakthrough Advertising.

The target audience is Problem-Aware but not Solution-Aware. They know they have sleep apnea. They know it's dangerous. But they don't know a pillow could help. They think the only options are CPAP machines or surgery.

Schwartz's rule: The more aware your prospect, the more direct you can be. The less aware, the more indirect you must be.

That's why the headline doesn't say "pillow." A problem-aware reader would think "a pillow for sleep apnea? Ridiculous" and bounce. Instead, it leads with the problem dramatized ("Dead for 60 seconds") and a mysterious mechanism ("Butterfly Method") that creates curiosity without revealing the product category.

The 3,000-word journey walks them up the awareness ladder: Problem-Aware → Solution-Aware → Product-Aware → Most-Aware (ready to buy).

The "Butterfly Method" naming is Schwartz's "mechanism" technique. When the market has heard every claim, you win by naming how your product works, not just what it does.

Advertorial #2: "Neurologist Discovers 3,000-Year-Old Japanese 'Butterfly' Method"

Different angle. Same formula. This one targets people with chronic neck pain.

Neck pain advertorial hero

Notice the pattern. The "Butterfly Method" branding carries over, but the entry emotion is completely different.

Derila makes Sleep apnea about fear of dying. Here Neck pain is about chronic frustration i.e. "I've tried everything and nothing works."

The mid-section walks through every solution the narrator tried and why it failed: memory foam pillows, adjustable air pillows, cervical support rolls. Each one dismissed with a specific, believable reason.

This does two things at once:

  • Validates anyone reading who's also tried these things ("yes! That happened to me too!")
  • Clears the competitive field: by the time Derila shows up, every alternative has already been disqualified

Advertorial #3: "The Secret Reason Why Losing Weight Won't Fix Your Snoring"

This one has the smallest ad volume currently of the 3 and one goes after snoring specifically.

Snoring advertorial hero

The headline is a contrarian hook. "Losing weight won't fix your snoring" goes against what most people believe (and what most doctors say). It creates a gap: "Wait, why not?" ... that the article fills.

The testimonials in this version are all about relationships. "My wife couldn't sleep because of my snoring." "Moved back into the bedroom with my husband."

It's not selling a pillow. It's selling a marriage fix.

The Pattern

Same product. Three completely different emotional entry points:

  • Sleep apnea = fear of dying
  • Neck pain = frustration with chronic pain
  • Snoring = relationship strain

No matter which problem keeps you up at night (literally), there's a Derila advertorial written specifically for you.

Each one is 10,000+ words. Each one reads like a real article. And every single one ends at the same place, driving to that same product page:

Derila Ergo product page

Three stories. One pillow. 4.1 million visits a month.

The Full Funnel Goes Way Deeper

We just broke down the entire funnel inside the Funnel of the Week Members Area.

You'll see:

  • The 5-OTO upsell stack that turns a $30 pillow into $100+ average order value
  • The split transaction strategy — why they break orders into multiple charges
  • The Trustpilot review filtering trick that keeps their public rating clean
  • The checkout friction point that's likely costing them conversions (easy fix)
  • The full 47-minute video walkthrough — every screen, every upsell, every pricing decision recorded end-to-end

Have a great weekend!

The Funnel of the Week Team

PS - in case you’re wondering, what Funnel of the Week is all about…

More on What’s Inside Funnel of the Week Members Area

Funnel of the Week has been live just one month now, and if you haven’t logged in for a bit, here’s what you’ve been missing:

We continue to stack full funnel breakdowns each and every week inside the Members Area:

We’ve got: 

  • ecomm funnels

  • VSL funnels

  • Info Products funnels

  • (and more)

…And we add new funnel breakdowns & swipes each week.

So if you have a funnel you want us to break down?

(Including all the landing pages, order bumps, upsells, downsells, email/sms followup & more…)

Just let us know and we’ll add it to our Funnel of the Week “next up” list. 

We’ll go through the funnel, document all the funnel steps, email/sms followups, etc. as we become a real customer (we don’t ask for refunds), and document the whole process so you have it at your fingertips.

If you’re not yet inside the Members Area? Go here to learn more about Funnel of the Week & get access.

The big idea of Funnel of the Week is this:

We break down a new DTC funnel (including ads, front end offer, upsells, post-purchase emails/sms/etc.), each and every week.

Here’s a quick Google doc walking through what we at Funnel of the Week has got in store for you, each and every week:

Check it out. We’re doing a special “early bird” price for access for a limited time.

And if you want great funnel insights delivered to your email inbox, multiple times per week? Go here to sign up for our Funnel of the Week email newsletter (it’s free) funneloftheweek.com

That’s all for today.

Have a great week!

The Funnel of the Week Team

PS: Not yet subscribed to our free Funnel of the Week newsletter? Join now for exclusive insights: https://funneloftheweek.com

PPS: What insights do YOU want in our funnel breakdowns? Hit reply and share your thoughts

PPPS: Got a funnel you think we should break down? We’d love to hear your suggestions!