What we set out to test
Can online video advertising help drive foot traffic and unlock sales for brick-and-mortar stores?
The background
HipVan, an online furniture retailer in Singapore, offers consumers stylish furniture at a fair price to help them build their dream homes. The brand decided to launch its first showroom to give consumers the opportunity to see and touch the furniture in person before making a purchase. To increase foot traffic in its showroom, HipVan decided to see if it could unlock incremental business growth by running an online video campaign alongside its search campaign.
How we set the experiment up
HipVan ran YouTube ads beside its existing search campaign for six weeks in Singapore to understand their combined impact on foot traffic and sales.
Search ads
- Used product keywords, generic keywords (including “for me” and “near me”), and advanced audience solutions
YouTube ads
- Created TrueView in-stream and TrueView for action ads to encourage viewers to click through to the brand’s store location landing page and Google Maps page
- Tapped advanced audience solutions like in-market, similar, and custom intent
HipVan used store visit conversions to assess its campaign performance.
Solutions we used
What we learned
Using search and video in tandem can help omnichannel retailers drive full-funnel results. HipVan saw a 5X return on ad spend (ROAS) for its store visits, in-store sales conversions, and the value of individual transactions (basket size value) when it ran search and YouTube campaigns at the same time. Organic searches for HipVan also jumped by 528%, which showed the channels’ ability to increase brand interest.
“We were pleasantly surprised by how our YouTube campaign increased store visits and brand recall. This experiment gave us the comfort to invest more in online video in the future and make it a permanent part of our marketing mix.” — Shobhit Datta, Co-founder, HipVan
This case study is part of the Experiment with Google Ads program.
