Data-led optimisation accelerates ROI for automotive brand

Sector

Automotive

Format

Search, Display

Overview

Neo@Ogilvy UK, Ogilvy’s media agency and performance arm, was tasked with helping an automotive brand to increase test drives and brochure downloads, as well as to drive users to engage with the brand via the online car configurator and dealership visits in the UK. 

The brand’s target was a combined cost per acquisition (CPA) of £12. 

It worked alongside demand-side platform (DSP) The Trade Desk to power an insight-driven campaign, fuelled by data for maximum efficacy. 

The agency also used The Trade Desk’s data management platform to run a custom, third-party strategy for users who were in the market for automotive brands. Applying a bid push-down feature, Koa™ Predictive Clearing Price, allowed the team to fight first-price auction dynamics while reducing the likelihood of paying higher-than-average CPMs for publishers. 

The campaign’s most expressive ad group had 37 million bid combinations, ensuring the advertiser would pay the right price for the best-performing sites, as well as for other targeting combinations like time of day, device type, or browser. Other strategies included using Koa™, The Trade Desk’s artificial (AI) engine, to surface recommendations that can be applied automatically or manually.

What was the role of digital within the media mix?

The Trade Desk’s Koa™ AI engine is built on the DSP’s data set to help media buyers and traders harness patterns efficiently, bringing key insights to the forefront of strategy. 

Koa™ allows for media planning and buying decisions to be informed by data from the start. The result is less waste in budgets, increased return on ad spend, and higer than average expressiveness scores.

Neo@Ogilvy also used The Trade Desk’s Koa™ Audience Predictor tool to extend the scale ofits proprietary data, and Koa™ Identity Alliance to target users across different devices. These tools identified high-value segments and allowed for a well-performing prospecting strategy. 

Key statistics

£9.24
cost per acquisition (CPA)
23%
Improvement from the original cost per acquisition (CPA) target

What results did you attain? What was the biggest achievement?

Neo@Ogilvy and The Trade Desk saved the motor brand 11% of media spend in Q4 by applying Koa™ Predictive Clearing Price to the ad groups. In terms of performance, the brand achieved a CPA of £9.24. This represented a 23% improvement from the original CPA target. Finally, the agency’s use of the platform’s architecture ultimately earned the brand a whopping return on investment increase from 1.1x to 9x. 

 

In a sentence...

Global automotive brand dramatically improves ROI while decreasing media spend with data-led optimisation campaign.

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