Context
Dentsu, a leading global advertising and marketing agency, is known for pushing the boundaries for innovation. Headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, Dentsu provides a comprehensive range of services, including media planning, digital marketing, branding, and creative solutions. Their client roster boasts some of the world’s most recognizable brands, including Co-op, a prominent UK-based retailer committed to ethical practices and community engagement.
Co-op operates across various sectors, from groceries to legal services, while maintaining a member-owned structure emphasizing sustainability and social responsibility. Their online platform, coop.co.uk, is a hub for their diverse offerings. When Co-op sought to enhance its digital presence, Dentsu was a natural partner with whom to work.
Challenge
Dentsu’s initial focus with Co-op was straightforward, drive app user acquisition. Partnering with Kayzen, we’ve executed a mobile programmatic campaign that effectively brought new users to the Co-op app. However, as the collaboration extended, Dentsu and Co-op recognized the need to go beyond app installs.
The next step was to elevate Co-op’s brand presence by reaching more people and engaging them on a deeper level. Seeing the potential beyond conventional advertising, Dentsu turned to Kayzen’s Video+ ad format. It wasn’t just about driving views or clicks; it was about combining the reach of a traditional branding campaign with the measurable engagement of interactive content. Kayzen’s Video+ offered this unique advantage – it delivers upper-funnel KPIs like reach and video completes while capturing user ad interactions that can be analyzed and leveraged for future retargeting.
Dentsu’s goal was clear:
- Run a campaign that could deliver double the value.
- Reach and engage users.
- Set the stage for bringing them down the funnel.
Approach
As summer approached, Co-op was gearing up for some seasonal promotions centered around ‘BBQ’ or ‘Picnic’ related products. These potentially polarizing summer themes present an ideal opportunity to engage users in a debate. Dentsu worked with Kayzen on a solution utilizing a Video+ Quiz end card to enhance their video ads. The Video+ Quiz invites users to interact and engage in the age-old summer debate: ‘BBQ vs. Picnic,’ which is better?
The concept was straightforward. First, show Co-op’s summer promotional video. Then, as the video concluded, the Quiz end card prompted viewers to participate in a brief quiz about their summer plans. This quiz not only seamlessly integrated Co-op’s summer offers but also directed users to Co-op’s “Summer Offers” landing page.
To maximize engagement, we specifically chose to run the Video+ Quiz ad format as Rewarded Video Ads within gaming apps. Gaming users, who are typically highly engaged and accustomed to watching ads for in-game rewards, were an ideal target for this campaign. This format naturally captured user attention and encouraged interaction with the quiz after viewing the video, driving both brand awareness and deeper engagement.
The execution was carried out in steps:
- Video+ ad development
- Content and design – Kayzen collaborated closely with the Dentsu/Co-op teams to design the quiz end card. This collaboration involved determining the quiz’s structure, identifying key events to capture, and selecting the engagement metrics to track.
- Iterative process – The creative development process was iterative, with each new version improving from engagement data. Each aspect, from quiz questions to visual elements, was refined to ensure the final product was engaging and insightful.
BBQ vs Picnic: Which is better?
- Targeted campaign
- Audience segmentation – The campaign is targeted to reach a new audience. Existing app users were excluded to ensure the campaign focused on attracting new users and maximizing brand exposure.
- Ongoing data review – As users interacted with the Video+ ad, their responses to the quiz end card provided valuable insights into their preferences. This data was crucial for Dentsu and Kayzen, as it’s further analyzed for future audience segmentation and used for retargeting in subsequent campaigns.
Impact
From the start, Dentsu’s partnership with Co-op aimed to achieve two objectives: elevate brand awareness and drive user engagement. The campaign reached and exceeded its goals through Dentsu’s collaboration with Kayzen and utilizing the Video+ Quiz ad format.
Over the course of two months, the campaign reached over 2.2 million unique users. By deliberately targeting Rewarded placements, the campaign was able to deliver a 93% View Through Rate (VTR), which in turn ensured users were fully engaged when being exposed to the interactive quiz, allowing the Video+ ad to foster deeper interaction. The Video+ campaign transformed passive viewers into active participants, driving over 400,000 ad interactions.
Key highlights:
- Reach
- Over 2.2 million unique users reached within 2 months, boosting Co-op brand visibility during their targeted period.
- High engagement
- Achieved an 93% view-through rate (VTR).
- More than 400,000 ad interactions were recorded.
- Optimized cost
- The Cost Per Ad Interaction began at $0.40 and was optimized to as low as $0.16 over the campaign period
- Note: The ad interaction event was specifically measured when a user answered the first question in the Quiz end card.
- Website traffic
- Nearly 1.9 million visits to Co-op’s website were generated, including traffic from both direct video click-throughs and users who engaged with the quiz and clicked through afterward.
- Campaign theme winner: PICNIC
- The “Picnic vs. BBQ” messaging was a creative centerpiece of the campaign. When users were asked, “You can’t have a summer without: a) BBQ or b) Picnic,” the majority (53%) selected BBQ. However, despite BBQ being the popular choice, the Picnic-themed quiz drove significantly better engagement.
- The Picnic-themed Video+ end card delivered a 33% higher interaction rate and a 25% lower Cost Per Interaction than the BBQ quiz.
- The Picnic-themed end card also achieved a 50% higher quiz completion rate and 121% higher click-outs to the landing page.
- The “Picnic vs. BBQ” messaging was a creative centerpiece of the campaign. When users were asked, “You can’t have a summer without: a) BBQ or b) Picnic,” the majority (53%) selected BBQ. However, despite BBQ being the popular choice, the Picnic-themed quiz drove significantly better engagement.
Additionally, Dentsu observed a 17% uplift in average weekly organic install numbers for the Co-op app since the campaign’s launch, demonstrating the full-funnel effectiveness of the Video+ ad format. Co-op saw a sustained increase in average organic installs from the start of the Video+ branding campaign, which continued throughout the campaign’s run-time.
By leveraging Kayzen’s Video+ ad format, Dentsu delivered a branding campaign that didn’t just inform; it connected, engaged, and converted visitors, setting a new standard for brand engagement and customer acquisition.
