With countless eyes on screens, across devices and platforms, media consumption is growing faster than ever before. The way people digest content has become more complex as well, as they move between displays, casting online video to their TVs and watching TV content online.
It’s not a linear story. For some demographics television makes more sense, for others online video means more reach. And for some groups, it’s a combination of both that works best. Simply, advertisers need to go back to marketing 101: putting audiences first.
A customer-centric mindset
In order to translate reach into meaningful business impact, marketers need to speak to the right people. Research shows that relevant video ads get three times the attention of an average video ad.
In order to translate reach into meaningful business impact, marketers need to speak to the right people.
Greek pizza delivery company Pizza Fan did just that. As the largest of its kind in the region, it knew it needed to reach customers where they were: online. The company focused on finding the right customers through YouTube, then made it personal.
Pizza Fan dove deep into segmentation. It based its reach on detailed demographics and intent, honing in on behaviour and interest to find the right customers. From the movie fanatic to the gamer to the music buff, the plan was to make every ad relevant to the viewer — using everything from top trending topics in Greece to the videos that users were searching for. The next step was pairing each audience with the right ad.
Relevant ads at scale
With constant access to media and endless choice, more people are turning to video for personalised, relevant content. Everybody loves pizza, but we all have our own favourite flavour. So the real key for Pizza Fan was providing messages that meant something to their viewers and their individual tastes and preferences.
With the help of performance marketing agency Koolmetrix, the team used Director’s Mix to get the scale they were looking for. They created a foundation of assets and made the text, music, and images swappable to allow for the ads to be easily tailored to different kinds of users.
With constant access to media and endless choice, more people are turning to video for personalised, relevant content.
The company knew it needed to appeal to various types of customers because pizza at its core is personal. At the end of last year, Pizza Fan kicked off its efforts creating 221 unique ads across 25 campaigns and 441 ad groups with 16 audiences and 270 topics.
Personalisation paid off
Within the first three weeks, the company saw impressive results. 63 percent of Greeks aged 18-44 viewed Pizza Fan’s ads. They were shown 19 million times, with 2.3 million people seeing them at least once. And Google searches for Pizza Fan increased by 19 percent.
But numbers aren’t the only measure of success. “It helped us discover the importance and power of segmentation which, since then, we’ve been incorporating into our strategies for our online and offline campaigns,” says Christina Nikolopoulou, Pizza Fan Project Manager.
And with the curveball 2020 has thrown at us, the way you speak to customers now matters more than ever. Dimosthenis Avgeris, Pizza Fan Digital Marketing Manager adds, “We found a path to connect with our audience. Now we can be sure we’re reaching the right person with the right message at the right time.”
We found a path to connect with our audience. Now we can be sure we’re reaching the right person with the right message at the right time
“Google Director Mix superbly combines creative and performance optimization by utilizing Google's advanced AI technology. Testing such numerous content variations and selecting the most optimal for each target group, would otherwise be humanly impossible," says Nikos Kostroglou, Managing Partner at Koolmetrix.
With billions of searches happening daily, and the average consumer seeing significantly more ads than they did 40 years ago, it’s crucial for brands to offer relevant, personalised content. A strong understanding of what customers need will significantly improve the quality of ad campaigns and, ultimately, the bottom line.
