To increase brand awareness and generate demand for their digital subscription in the US and UK, the Financial Times designed a product education campaign incorporating display banners and TrueView ads
Approach
Created campaign incorporating both video and display ads
Trafficked ads through DoubleClick Campaign Manager
Optimised viewable impressions, frequency and reach through DoubleClick Bid Manager
Goals
Raise brand awareness and generate demand among large numbers of potential digital subscribers in the US and UK
Results
43% lower cost per viewable completed view than other open exchange video activity
13% higher viewability than previous campaign
121% higher click-through rate than other demand-side platforms used for this campaign
11% higher click-through rate from TrueView-to-display remarketing than sequential display remarketing
31% higher view rate from TrueView remarketing than traditional prospecting
Founded in London in 1888, today the Financial Times possesses a global footprint as well as a keen focus on digital developments. To increase brand awareness and generate demand for their digital subscription in the US and UK, the FT designed a product education campaign incorporating display banners and 15- and 30-second pre-roll and TrueView ads. Digital agency Essence then embraced an automated approach using DoubleClick Bid Manager to trade both via open auction and direct deals with key publishers.
“At Essence, we’re always looking for ways to improve the efficiency of our campaigns,” says Programmatic Account Manager Joseph Myers. “Key to this is being able to maximise viewability, control our frequency more holistically, and validate the accuracy of our targeting. DoubleClick tools are a huge help.”
Within DoubleClick Bid Manager, the team used demographic, affinity, category and in-market targeting, and remarketed using first-party data. This included TrueView-to-display and remarketing from one video length to another.
“We’re giving prospective subscribers more choice while controlling targeting and managing frequency. TrueView via DBM has been a major contributor to the success of our campaigns.”
Michael Dolan, Head of Paid Media, Financial Times
By running this activity on a single platform, Essence could control the frequency of ads shown across video and display. This meant that individual users were capped at how many impressions they would see to control reach while Nielsen Audience tracking on Video provided the ability to verify the targeting employed was reaching the intended demographic.
Active View in DoubleClick Bid Manager monitored how many impressions were viewable and optimised towards impressions with a higher likelihood of being in view. As a result, the FT achieved its highest overall viewability to date on a brand campaign – 13% higher than the previous campaign. For video activity on DoubleClick Bid Manager, viewability was 16.5% higher than video on another platform.
Underpinned by better viewability, the click-through rate from ads traded on the open exchange via DoubleClick Bid Manager were 121% higher than other demand-side platforms, and the cost per viewable completed view was 43% lower than other open exchange video activity. The FT’s TrueView-to-display remarketing attained an 11% higher click-through rate than sequential display remarketing, while remarketing using different video lengths produced a 31% higher view rate than traditional prospecting.
“We’ve become increasingly interested in programmatic at the FT, so we were excited to add TrueView on DoubleClick Bid Manager to our video campaign offering,” concludes Michael Dolan, Head of Paid Media for the Financial Times. “We’re giving prospective subscribers more choice while controlling targeting and managing frequency. It’s been a major contributor to the success of our campaigns.”
