Infectious Media feature in Marketing Week’s “Programmatic’s new role in integrated campaigns” for their John Lewis programmatic activity last Christmas.
As ad formats develop and the techniques of data-driven marketing grow increasingly sophisticated, programmatic buying is evolving at a remarkable pace, placing revolutionary new technology at the heart of integrated campaigns.
Retailer John Lewis also used programmatic to merge its online and offline marketing activity last Christmas. In partnership with programmatic agency Infectious Media, the brand directed digital display advertising to appear at the same time as its TV ads, featuring the story of a boy and his toy penguin Monty.
To achieve this, Infectious Media used a commercial database of TV slots for more than 2,000 channels so that it knew exactly when the TV ad would run.
The agency then bid on digital display ads available across the web on desktops and tablets within milliseconds of a John Lewis TV ad appearing. This enabled the retailer to reach its audience across two screens and maximise the impact of its Christmas investment.
Alongside this strategy, John Lewis ran a ‘tailored takeover’ on the Radio Times website in the lead-up to Christmas. The brand chose the site because of the similarities between John Lewis customers and Radio Times readers. The activation worked like a regular homepage takeover but, rather than show the same ad to all visitors, it used programmatic data points to show tailored creative based on individuals’ browsing habits.
Infectious Media drew up a segmentation based on three of John Lewis’s most important product ranges: home, electrical and beauty. Customers who visited one of these sections on John Lewis’s website were then shown a related ad when visiting the Radio Times. Users who had not visited the retailer’s site were served a generic Christmas ad.
Kane Bartlett, online acquisition and paid search manager at John Lewis, says the campaign was an opportunity for the brand “to break new ground” in its digital marketing activity. This included bringing together its twin aims of raising brand awareness and driving sales within the same campaign. The retailer reports that the click-through rate for the tailored takeover was 42% higher than the industry average, while average viewability for the campaign was 30% above the IAB standard. “We will continue to push the boundaries in digital marketing as we believe it is key to maintaining our position as a market leader,” says Bartlett.
Read the complete article here.