working in programmatic

What’s

STRATEGIES TARGETING PERSONALISATION

How programmatic buying drove more than double-digit

advertising performance.

The power of programmatic is being realised by savvy marketers who are shifting from impression-focus

to action-focus and tailoring campaigns around a brand’s core-business goals.

Seasonally directed programmatic targeting is increasing sales by efficiently delivering messages that reach customers exactly when they need certain products.

Blue Lagoon Cruises online advertising achieved an 800% ROI, representing 30% of total bookings. [Acquire Case Study 2019]

Prospan cough medicine increased market share by 18.5% and grew sales by 27% [WARC Case Study 2018]

Programmatic geo-targeting drove additional sales, reaching a target audience previously assumed unviable.

An airport client reduced spend on parking advertising by 30% and maintained conversions [Acquire Case Study 2019]

The Blues grew YOY ticket sales revenue by 34% through smarter targeting [Acquire Case Study 2019]

Brands used consumer journey data to dynamically deliver personalised creative to consumers and significantly increasing conversion.

Airline campaign using creative relevance to significantly increase website booking traffic. [Acquire Case Study 2019]

University of Sydney increased applications by 384% [WARC Case Study 2017]

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Here is a collection of case studies that have challenged online strategy, accessed advanced targeting tools and introduced personalisation into the mix.

Blue Lagoon investing in a new channel

Blue Lagoon Cruises operates small boat cruises throughout the Fiji islands. They want to lower cost per acquisition by increasing direct online bookings rather than using booking engines and traditional travel agency channels.

Objectives Increase online bookings and conversions – lowering the cost per booking to below 10%.

Insight The cruise market is very competitive, crowded and seasonal in nature. Most operators tend to use traditional channels like print and TV to reach the older cruise audience. It is on average a 7 month decision making process for ‘cruisers’ from research to booking.

Strategy Let other cruise companies create strong market awareness and intent and we will use online advertising right at the point ‘cruisers’ are making their decision to book. Using banner display ads, Facebook Newsfeed ads, Search and remarketing with a 30% discount for early bird bookings.

18:1Return on Investment

5.6%Average cost per booking

30%Share of

all bookings

Takeaways

• Reaching the right audience, at the right time, in the right place with right message increases conversions

• It is a combination of targeting and creative that delivers the best results

• Even older audiences can be reached and converted online

Seasonally Directed Programmatic Works

Prospan proprietary algorithm, seasonally relevant message delivery increases sales

Prospan(Flordis), a natural cough medicine, for children created the ‘cough prediction algorithm’ to increase sales during a market decline.

Objectives Effectively reach the one million mothers in Australia with children under 12 to increase sales and awareness in competitive marketplace.

Insight Research showed that Australian mothers were not inclined to treat coughs immediately, as they believed the cough would go away on its own.

Strategy The ‘Don’t ignore a cough’ campaign presented customers with situational images where people around the coughers were victims of the symptoms. Proprietary analytic modelling was used to predict when and where children would get sick, enabling strategic media activation. The multi-variant algorithm combined weather and environmental data facilitating real-time media purchasing decisions controlling exactly when to turn on and off messages across the country.

27%Sales increase

during cold season

18.5%Market share

growth

“With a powerful targeting strategy, we kept our message simple with a charming, direct problem-solution approach to situations that mums could relate to.”

54%CTR

Takeaways

• Advertisers can combine creative relevancy with programmatic timing to enhance targeting and cost efficiencies

• One method to increase ROI may be to better leverage and understand consumer data

• Being resourceful with data is often as important as the data resources themselves

Seasonally Directed Programmatic Works

WARC CASE STUDY 2018

An airport client re-wrote the rules to achieve better performance

The client advertised short-term, long-term, covered and valet parking to travelers in a specific geographical region. They wished to halve their budgeted online spend for ‘always-on’ parking as an arbitrary starting point to reduced advertising costs.

Objectives Reduce budgets but look for ways to make spend work harder – optimising conversions and test new strategies to deliver better performance.

Insight Preconceived ideas about parking, like people who live close to the airport are less likely to drive and park when travelling, may be false until proven with actual data. We found ‘pockets’ of suburbs close to the airport that delivered significant bookings because people living there could afford to park and the ease of travelling was more important to them.

Strategy We divided the total market catchment into two zones. An outer zone where long distance travel meant Uber and taxi pricing far out-weighed the cost of parking. An inner zone where Uber and taxi pricing were comparable or economically better than parking. Within both these regions we broke it down further into geo targeted suburbs so that we could measure conversions. We used search, display and remarketing and used different levels of display to test the effect of awareness on search performance. We introduced video into remarketing to demonstrate a new guided parking system to show the ease of parking. We discarded not performing suburbs and increased spend on performing ones.

30%Reduction in spend

12%Reduction in the

cost per conversion

Same Number of conversions

as previously

Takeaways

• Challenge behavioural assumptions to ensure correct targeting is employed

• Display advertising assisted in lowering the CPA for search advertising

• Product/service convenience is stronger than price for some consumers

Programmatic Geo-targeting Works

The Blues used improved geo-targeting technology to increase performance

2019 was the second year the Blues used programmatic online advertising to reach fans and people wanting the experience of a live event to drive ticket sales for home games at Eden Park. There were learnings from the previous year including spending more on NZ derby games and less on offshore opposition games. There were also new advance targeting tools available.

Objectives Continue to improve reach, engagement and ticket sale conversions.

Insight There was no point creating awareness too far out for games. 7 days was optimal but it was the last 3 days prior to the match that 90% of ticket sales were made. In 2018 programmatic returned a good result and helped contribute to an overall increase in ticket sales. However the 2019 season allowed Acquire to significantly improve based on past learnings and optimisations. By the end of the 2019 season the number of transactions had increased by 19% compared to last year using the same budget. This increase also saw revenue climb significantly by 34% year on year, allowing for a better return on investment. The Blues’s return on ad spend increased by 32% as a result. Additionally, the average revenue per transaction had also increased which meant that now more sales were being generated at a higher average return.

Takeaways

• Technology is always improving. Don’t accept the status quo

• Geo location relevance combined with message relevance can deliver powerful results

Programmatic Geo-targeting Works

“Programmatic Advertising and the advanced digital advertising strategies offered by Acquire were completely new to our business. Acquire has patiently coached us

though the past 2 seasons and helped us better understand our own business by providing excellent reporting and insights from the campaigns we’ve deployed.”

Robyn Rowley - GM Brand + Community, the Blues

An airline client used creative relevance to engage with multiple target audiences

The airline were celebrating a major anniversary and were wanting an ambitious multi-audience campaign to target Families as well as younger Adventure Seekers who are typically younger, hard to reach and digitally savvy.

Objectives Drive quality traffic to the airline’s booking pages, increasing bookings

Insight Families and Adventure Seekers typically spend more of their travel budget on accommodation and/or experiences and look for deals to get them to where they want to go. While they are price conscious, Adventure Seekers are savvy to marketing tactics and offers.

Strategy Use creative relevance and advanced targeting to reach and engage the target audiences. This included a cross-channel strategy of display, social, audio and remarketing. Dynamic creative was deployed for display banners and remarketing with 8 creative executions, 4 of these to align to each of the target audiences. Spotify provided further reach to younger audiences. The integration of different channels and increased engagement cumulated in Facebook delivering significant quality traffic, dominated by mobile.

Takeaways

• Creative and creative relevance is often overlooked or not given enough attention

• Superior creative can increase campaign performance by up to 70%

• Advanced targeting using a breadth of channels, with the right creative, will increase engagement all the way down the sales funnel

Dynamic Creative Works

0.59%CTR

440%Over delivery of Clicks

87%Mobile Engagement

Programmatic delivers brand value in University of Sydney customised campaign

The University of Sydney increased postgraduate applications utilising programmatic and personalised creative.

Objectives Increase digitally-attributed applications for postgraduate study with a smaller budget than in the past.

Insight The sector is undergoing significant change with increased competition from new online course providers while demand for postgrad studies was declining, resulting in institutions increasing marketing spending to attract fewer prospects.

Strategy Over 6,000 personalised creative executions targeted to people identified as serious about studies. The ads were dynamically produced to match course interests and reflect stages of the application process using analysis from Google Analytics and Adobe for insights into applicants’ journeys to identify behaviours that best predict their progress along the journey. The strategy of personalised recruitment was brought to life with the model that operated constantly informing both programmatic media and dynamic creative.

384%Increase in applications YOY

300%higher CTR

$1.2min incremental revenue (AUD)

Takeaways

• Consumer journey insights can be used to inform bidding rules for programmatic

• Banner ads can be enhanced and invigorated with personalised creative

• Reframing the role of a channel within the media mix can make a significant difference to the impact it has on an overall campaign

Dynamic Creative Works

“Our idea was based on a powerful human truth: that personalization in communication is more effective than generalisation.”

WARC CASE STUDY 2017

ENABLING AGENCIES + BRANDS

to do extraordinary programmatic