Digital display is crucial to what we do, but with 1,440 different creative launching every month it was difficult to do more. By replacing everything with dynamic creative, we were able to efficiently launch over 83,000 different creative each month (432,000 total to date) with further personalization based on consumer behavior, previous interactions with the INFINITI website, and multiple other data points.
The result of this was a 167.03% increase in CTR, and a 63.01% decrease in CPC driving a renewed online interest in the INFINITI brand.
Background.
Continual decline in the premium automotive segment was the new norm, particularly in entry-level premium vehicles. This is due to the fact that consumers were becoming more hesitant to upgrade from volume brands as a result of prevailing market conditions.
INFINITI was already running a mature, always-on digital approach covering the full spectrum of online channels. However, INFINITI’s display assets were not able to make full use of the audience data available due to the volume of creative variations that were manually created. This meant all audience segments for each vehicle were served the same ad regardless of what behavioural data we had available, which made it difficult to stand out in a highly competitive environment.
Through the use of dynamic creative, INFINITI would be able to cut through the clutter by delivering users meaningful creative, with vehicles and USPs chosen based on the user's own online behavior.
Describe the creative idea/insights
Due to the current creative approach - which already meant producing 1,440 creative variants each month – there was no way that we could further segment messaging for each of the 45 segments. However, the range of different users, interests and motivations that our research uncovered meant there was no “one size fits all” approach to messaging that could be successful. Data-driven personalization would allow us to stay one step ahead of our online competition.
Describe the strategy.
To bring this idea to life, we turned to dynamic creative to deliver the right message to anyone who would be interested in any of our models.
Through Google Analytics data, we identified five audience segments for each of our nine models. Each of these 45 target segments were matched to a total of 4 different USPs, based on the car features that were most likely to appeal to them. Next, we drew on first party data to identify consumers who had been on the website before. Based on this interaction, one of three different CTA’s were used to encourage that individual to take the next logical step in their purchase journey. We also factored in location, creating 8 different backdrops to deliver a more personalized creative for all markets.
Describe the execution.
Between our 9 models, 8 markets, 5 audiences per model, 4 USPs per audience, in 2 languages, 10 creative sizes and with options for 3 different CTAs, we had a solution capable of delivering 86,400 creative variants. With an offer every month, we have delivered 432,000 unique creative tailored to multiple distinct data points to date, in an 8 layered decision tree that would piece together creative on-the-fly.
The roll out for dynamic creative was staggered through February/March 2018 to allow for an initial test and proof of concept, with benchmarks taken over November 2017 to March 2018 that would become our target for the rest of the financial year (ending March 2019). This means our testing would cover a total of 8 months and avoid having seasonality or other campaigns skew our results.
List the results.
Digital display was an integral part of INFINITI’s always on communications plan but the final results were stronger than the ambitious benchmarks set, with +167.03% higher CTR, -63.01% reduction in cost per click (CPC), +139.16% clicks to site. This change in performance delivered changes to efficiency that would feed through to increase site traffic and interest in the brand in the declining premium automotive market.
Not only did dynamic creative succeed in allowing us to deliver much greater relevance to the user INFINITI effectively challenged some global best in class case studies. This included McDonalds Japan at 25,000 creative variants and Uber Eats Australia who had used 720 creative variants.