Media Case Study: Lifting performance with dynamic creative optimization

By Rachel Chan

Even though overall Certified Pre-Owned sales are down this year, a number of automakers — including Hummer, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Kia, Land Rover, Lexus, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Subaru — experienced double-digit sales increases between Jan.-Sept. 2009 compared to the same time period last year.

Earlier this year the Digital Marketing group at Mercedes-Benz USA, a Razorfish client, looked to maximize the online performance of its CPO program. Already reaching the target audience through a highly targeted media campaign, the next lever to pull was creative. Without incremental budget to support a heavy creative rotation of monthly offers, the Razorfish media team looked to third-party dynamic creative partners.

After reviewing several vendors in the dynamic ad space, Teracent was selected as our partner. Teracent stood out based on its previous experience with other automakers (including Ford, Honda, Scion and Toyota), quality customer service and proven ad-optimization technology. With the Teracent technology, advertisers can test various creative iterations and multiple variables within the banners. Not only does the Teracent technology do the heavy lifting by rotating all the creative combinations, but the system also optimizes throughout the campaign based on client-specific success metrics.

A few examples of the Mercedes-Benz CPO creative iterations that were rotated and tested from mid-September to mid-October this year.

Mercedes-Benz decided to begin testing with several different variables ranging from general copy testing along with varying background and call-to-action button colors.

After only a short test period, Mercedes-Benz CPO media has begun to see a significant lift in performance. The graph below, Figure 1, illustrates the trend of the overall click-through rate (CTR) performance. Because CTR rate was a secondary metric, Teracent was not prioritized to optimize to CTR.

Figure 1: Click-through rate performance: the solid black line represents the performance of the average automotive campaign; the dotted line indicates the performance of the Mercedes-Benz CPO media campaign during the initial one-month test period.

However, the primary success metrics — an action indicating buying intent — saw a significant increase over time, resulting in better-than-average performance over the past month (see figure 2).

Figure 2: Actions indicating buying intent: the dotted line indicates the performance of the Mercedes-Benz CPO media campaign during the initial one-month test period.

Based on the successful optimization of the creative, Mercedes-Benz is continuing to utilize Teracent to minimize creative production costs and to rotate in relevant CPO offers. As new offers come into rotation, Teracent technology will continue to optimize to the performance winners and reveal learnings about the Mercedes-Benz audience. Mercedes-Benz plans to continue this test through the end of the year.

comments