Data-driven audience buying rapidly evolved in recent years: More and more media sales houses, agencies and advertisers create an own data management ecosystem and connect it to different programmatic platforms, in order to improve efficiency and impact of their campaigns. Delivering digital ads to specific target groups and consumer types based on factual intent data, real-time algorithms or classical behavioural information is becoming a much-valued standard for programmatic campaigns on desktop or mobile devices.
But besides the advantage of a growing variety of relevant audiences, there is another big chance in the flexibility of programmatic audience buying: it allows to easily manage and adjust advertising strategies based on specific data points, insights and real-time indicators. For programmatic trading and ad ops teams, this is a natural matter of course. But literally all people involved in the whole digital marketing process – from CMOs to creative teams in agencies – should be aware of the evolving opportunities. The minds of today’s “liquid consumers” are rapidly moving between different channels and experiences, online and offline – and it is more than ever important to reach them with tailored, truly relevant messages. Therefore, defining a data-driven strategy and developing the creative concept for the campaign must go hand in hand from the beginning on. An alignment of technical capabilities and creative ideas is essential. Brands that develop integrated, tailored strategies will gain competitive advantages in comparison to those who rely on one-dimensional approaches. The following case study from Norway shows an example of a marketer rethinking its classical digital marketing concept and who experiences remarkable campaign KPI uplifts.
A brand advertiser from the finance sector had run data-driven ad campaigns successfully in the past, but a recent campaign for loans based on conventional demographic data did not provide sufficient uplifts for the relevant KPIs. Together with the agency KO&CO, ABC Startsiden AS and nugg.ad, they decided to create a more comprehensive strategy for their loan product: The goal was to reach different target groups within one umbrella campaign based on intent, preferences and interests – with individual display ad creatives for each target group. Three different audience segments were defined:
Those audiences were addressed with data-driven skyscraper ads on ABC Startsiden’s premium websites. To validate the campaign effectiveness, a brand measurement based on market research was conducted to compare users from the target groups who have been exposed to the campaign with users without campaign contact.
The results: Approaching three different target groups with tailored, relevant ads paid off well: brand awareness, affinity and purchase intent for the loan product were increased in all target groups. An increase of up to +34% in brand awareness, +37% in brand affinity and +44% in purchase intent was measured within the target groups with campaign contact – in comparison to users from the target groups who were not exposed to the campaign. Besides the gains in effectiveness, advertisers benefit from granular audience insights: e.g. the highest uplift in brand awareness and affinity was measured in the target group “bank switchers”, while the highest increase in purchase intent was achieved in the target group of users who intend to travel.
