2019 Winners & Shortlists

Why is this work relevant for Media?

This work is a case study of how we leveraged an in-house technology platform to help our client explore a new social media channel and drive new user acquisitions. We worked with the client to build a media execution and creative strategy, which helped them tap into a social media platform for the first time and create personalised content at scale which led them to drive a 44% audience penetration. Our patented platform- an automated ai-driven video creator and ad optimisation platform, helped manage and deliver impactful results in reduced timelines by supporting content creation to campaign optimisation.

Background.

The client, a big OTT player based out of the MENA region, wanted to explore new incremental social media channels. They already had massive presence on some of the existing social media platforms but wanted to explore new channel(s) and strategies to increase app installs and consequently, customer acquisitions. The brief task was to study the various available platforms and their audiences, and create and own a media and creative execution strategy to enable a performance driven campaign in less than 40 days. We based our strategy on three parameters: 1. Study and choose the right channel to draw out the media strategy 2. Understand the target audience and region, to create personalised and tailored content at scale by using our platform 3. Leverage analytics and audience insights to engage and re-engage audiences for maximum impact

Describe the creative idea/insights

A detailed study on the available social media platforms and their user base, resulted in us identifying Snapchat as an untapped platform which could be leveraged because of the highly engaged and incremental Target audience available as compared to other platforms. The Client TG group was persons between the ages of 18- 37 years who want smart, intelligent and engaging content, specific to their interests. Leveraging the audience data we created video content across genres. We used our technology platform, which enabled us to use the clients existing assets and create 500+ variations tailored to suit the audience affinity like Saudi Arabian customs and culture. We used these versions for A/B testing and hence were able to release ad content which was highly personalised on Snapchat, that would help get us great results at the end.

Describe the strategy.

To create our media strategy we addressed the below points: 1.Identify the right audience set-geography, gender, OS etc. 2.Identify the right content across genres 3.Identify the best creative type 4.Identify the right bids and the budgets Basis our study we decided to leverage ONLY snapchat as the media channel. We started the campaign with broad targeting based on country and OS and multiple content genres like Arabic Movies, thrillers etc. The platform shared data analytics which helped us narrowed the targeting to the best audience set -iOS Saudi and Arabic and content genre- Arabic comedy. The platform enabled video creation from existing creative assets of the client. The platform allowed creative optimisation on run time. It identified the best performing creatives and dynamically allocated budgets to the same. Thus, the best performing creative got most exposure. Even the bids and budgets were automatically allocated based on the daily campaign performance.

Describe the execution.

To enable a successful execution, we kept introducing new audience groups into our target set on Snapchat, to expand our target audience set. We also ensured that new content was introduced on a daily basis across the various audience groups for audience engagement. We even changed the creative templates to identify the best performing templates. Controlled by our predictive budget allocation engine which runs 1000 decisions per hour, the tool kept altering the bids and increasing the budgets based on the campaign performance. Along with this multiple rules and triggers available in the tool helped us informed decisions thus achieving the desired performance. We had no previous performance benchmarks for Snapchat as a platform for the client, yet we took on the challenge to attain an Industry benchmark eCP in the range of $1.00-$1.50. In 37 days the campaign was scaled by 200x and 35+ master creatives were launched.

List the results.

The campaigns monetary results being given, this campaign was unique due to the strategic decision to deploy only one social platform growth for the client. Some of our highlighting achievements were: • Reduced eCPI by 96X even after scaling the campaign by 200X • Achieved lowest possible CPI (Half of Industry average) • Achieved 60-70% unique video viewers per day, with 44% audience penetration • Achieved 40-50Mins/$ spent on a window of 7 days • Achieved 30K installs in a period of 30 days For us the biggest achievements was becoming strategic partners for our clients and helping them execute a campaign focused on reach and scale and being able to help them allocate their budgets to achieve the business objective of opening up channels to reach audience and grow audience base.