After executives at a well-known consumer electronics manufacturer identified smarter audience profiling as the key to building better online ad campaigns, they turned to Yahoo! for help. By using Yahoo! Database Match, the client was able to zero in on the right customers to boost sales—while gaining key insights into the offline impact of its digital media program.
The Challenge
During the important holiday buying season, a leading consumer electronics manufacturer sought to increase sales across several distinct product lines. The company wanted to influence purchase behavior among a targeted group of online consumers who had encountered the advertiser’s creative campaign and holiday offer.
The company turned to Yahoo! for assistance in developing a data-driven digital media program designed to address three main goals. First, it wanted to measure gains in sales volume—while tracking the impact of online ads on offline purchases. Second, the company wanted to evaluate the campaign’s effectiveness in increasing brand favorability ratings and related market penetration metrics. Additionally, the client sought to use insights from the campaign to standardize its approach to future database marketing efforts.
The Solution
The company was eager to team with a leader in digital media management—a company that could deliver the broadest possible reach to relevant audiences while assisting with the development of data-driven campaigns. Executives turned to Yahoo! to take advantage of Yahoo’s database matching capabilities. This offering enables advertisers to merge their existing customer intelligence with consumer data from more than 150 million addressable users on Yahoo!, as well as offline data from trusted sources, such as Experian. It also incorporates tools for measuring how Yahoo! Database Match campaigns impact online and offline sales, purchase rates, brand penetration, and other key performance metrics.
Yahoo! Database Match gives advertisers the flexibility to choose the consumer targeting strategy that best aligns with their goals. Companies can elect to use pre-defined audience segments or custom-built profiles derived from Yahoo! user data to build campaigns. Alternatively, they can choose to match their customer database to the Yahoo! registered user file. After considering these options, the client decided to pair Yahoo! consumer data with its own customer and sales attribution data to define the target audience for its campaign. In consultation with the client, the Yahoo! team performed database matching on the following dimensions: name and street address (and/or email address); client registration and transaction data; and Yahoo! user exposure data.
The Yahoo! team then setup a test environment to track the effectiveness of campaign creative. The test methodology involved serving online ads to a portion of the target audience and comparing results to a control group. Advertisers can typically use Yahoo! Database Match to directly correlate exposure to online ad campaigns with retail purchase activity. However, the consumer electronics manufacturer’s products are sold by retailers that do not share in-store sales figures. To resolve this issue, Yahoo! was able to create a custom solution that used online product registrations as a proxy for in-store sales. The client estimated that 60 percent of its customers who purchase products in a retail store register those items online. To accurately assess the impact of online ad exposure on retail sales, the Yahoo! team continued to track and capture online registration data for two months following the end of the campaign.
The Results
By aligning an offline customer targeting strategy with its online marketing efforts, the consumer electronics manufacturer was able to better position itself to meet sales and branding goals.
Achieved 3.8 Percent Increase in Online Registrations
Based on its Yahoo! Database Match campaign, the consumer electronics manufacturer experienced a 3.8 percent increase in online registrations for products that were originally purchased in retail stores. Online product registrations were used as proxy for in-store sales. The advertiser also saw an increase in average order value of up to 18 percent for both online and in-store purchases made by buyers who had been exposed to the online ads.
Elevated Brand Awareness
Yahoo! offers advertisers access to several dimensions of data that provide insight into the online activities of more than 150 million consumers. By using Yahoo! Database Match, the client was able to connect the online behavior of its target audience at scale with offline purchases to gain valuable customer intelligence data. As a result of the campaign, the advertiser realized an 11 percent increase in online ad awareness. Brand perception among those exposed to the campaign was also more positive. For example, the consumer electronics manufacturer saw a four percent increase in those who identify its brand as innovative. And when asked about which brands they associated with technology and computer products, the advertiser’s brand was top of mind for respondents.
Increased Search Activity, Improved Engagement
For those exposed to the campaign, the advertiser experienced increased search activity on its brand name that was more than 1.5 times higher than the searches for its closest competitor. People who encountered the campaign were also highly engaged in searching for specific products featured in the online ad, such as laptops, desktops, and printers.