WE wanted to drive consumers’ attention to their prepaid card and demonstrate how much more value the card provides compared to competitors’ prepaid card promotions. The ultimate goals were to increase their prepaid customer base and drive awareness and sales acquisition. WE launched a highly targeted campaign that spanned video, display, search and social media platforms.
THE GOALS
Spread brand awareness as the fourth mobile operator in Egypt
Increase their customer base
Drive sales of their prepaid mobile cards
THE APPROACH
Ran one-month YouTube campaign
Used formats including TrueView, Bumper and Masthead ads
Applied in-market and affinity audiences and remarketing
THE RESULTS
80% reach among the intended audience
484% better average watchtime than previous blast campaigns of similar duration
153% increase in online mobile payments
494% growth in mobile service portal account signups
Gained 19,000 subscribers, contributing to over 25% of current subscriber base
Telecom Egypt, founded in 1854, is Egypt's telecommunication incumbent. In September 2017, Telecom Egypt launched its 4G service under the Brand WE, targeting WE to become the retail Brand for all of its communication service. WE is Egypt's first total telecom provider for Voice, Data and Mobile.
As well as boosting brand awareness as a mobile operator, WE wanted to drive consumers’ attention to their prepaid cards and demonstrate how much more value the card provides compared to competitors’ prepaid card promotions. The ultimate goals were to increase their prepaid customer base and drive online sales.

“A company’s strategies have to shift from product centric to customer centric. Through data and signals, companies can reach their target audience online to drive the campaign objectives. WE was successful in driving sales online as they properly used Google targeting techniques to reach the right customers who had the intention to convert,” says Tamer Alphonse, Google’s Industry Manager for Telecoms.
WE launched a highly targeted campaign that spanned video, display, search and social media platforms. “Digital gives us real-time results to optimize our media investment towards performance, which differs from other media channels”, explains WE's Digital Team. “While prepaid customers are basically mass audience, we managed to drive massive sales online. The campaign saw mobile payment conversions increase by 153%, while Mobile service portal signups increased by an incredible 494%."
WE chose to use YouTube due to the high mass reach techniques. “YouTube is a very important channel and considered our main online video advertising channel,” says WE Digital team. The YouTube campaign ran for a period of one month using a variety of formats such as TrueView, Bumper and Masthead ads. To ensure they were reaching the right users, WE made use of remarketing tools and in-market and affinity audiences.
WE achieved 80% reach among the intended audience and an average watchtime that was 484% better than previous blast campaigns of similar duration. Thanks to the use of remarketing and ad sequencing, they managed to increase the average view duration for each video through the campaign, achieving a view-through rate that was more than 30% higher than industry benchmarks. In all, they gained 19,000 subscribers to their YouTube channel, contributing to over 25% of their current subscriber base.