Mindshare needed a digital platform that could help one of its retail clients drive revenue more efficiently, while allowing them to obtain deeper consumer insights.
Goals
Move to digital platform integrated with Google Analytics
Deliver better consumer insights, faster
Drive revenue and performance for the client
Approach
Chose DoubleClick Digital Marketing components for advanced analytics, single cookie space
Use Path to Conversion Reports to get holistic view of consumer activity across the non-linear customer journey
Use high-fidelity data to show client importance of upper funnel activities, synergies between search/display
Results
Operational efficiencies from unified reporting, streamlined workflows
More time to reallocate to client strategy, driving business results
Smarter decisions driven by deeper insights, unified view
Active in 115 cities worldwide and servicing clients like Unilever, American Express, Nike and Ford, Mindshare is a global media network with strong digital capability. The company’s platform-agnostic approach allows Mindshare’s cross-functional account teams to handpick technologies that meet the unique needs of each client. For several clients, Mindshare recently implemented components of the DoubleClick Digital Marketing platform – the first modern ad platform for the modern web.
Unified platform connects analytics, buying solutions
Mindshare needed a digital platform that could help one of its retail clients drive revenue more efficiently, while allowing Mindshare to obtain deeper consumer insights. With one of the client’s requirements being the use of Google Analytics, Mindshare eventually chose the following DoubleClick Digital Marketing components to deliver more value to the client:
- DoubleClick for Advertisers, for reporting and ad serving
- Invite Media, as the Demand-Side Platform (DSP)
- DoubleClick Search, cross-engine search management
The deployment of these components meant that Mindshare could target, buy, traffic and report search- and display-campaigns from one technology stack. The common cookie space across DoubleClick, combined with the attribution modeling in Google Analytics and Paths to Conversion Reports in DFA, provided Mindshare the holistic consumer view it sought.
“The fact that the bottom-line platform was tied directly into Google Analytics, and a single cookie view, was important to this client,” says Danny Huynh, managing director of digital and client leadership at Mindshare. “We saw this as an opportunity for my team to more fully understand how all the digital channels were working together so that we could help drive our clients’ business forward.”
“Having these advanced analytics in one system is really what convinced the client to push this forward,” adds Beth Bridenstine, digital director at Mindshare. “But we quickly saw additional benefits.”
Having these advanced analytics in one system is really what convinced the client to push this forward, but we quickly saw additional benefits
Platform integration yields efficiencies
When Mindshare moved its client to DoubleClick Digital Marketing in mid-2012, it gained more than just advanced reporting – it also experienced operational efficiencies, creating time-savings for the team.
The integrated platform allows Mindshare to manage all channels across formats and devices in one place. The resulting boost in efficiency was evident during a recent holiday sale weekend, when the Mindshare team worked significantly fewer hours than the year before, yet still generated significant increases in the return on ad spend (ROAS) for a retail client.
“During this year’s Black Friday weekend, we went from working more than 100 hours to around 30 hours year-over-year...yet still saw a lift of more than 25% in ROAS,” says Beth. The time efficiencies allowed the team to focus more on making strategic optimizations by looking more closely at the data and insights. The platform capabilities, and efficiencies; combined with digital talent at Mindshare, led to record-breaking campaign performance for the client.
Streamlined reporting liberates time for growth
For Howard Gross, a digital analytics manager at Mindshare, DoubleClick Digital Marketing creates reporting and analytics efficiencies. Instead of downloading reports from various partners and manually uploading them into third-party tools, Howard can use DoubleClick’s API to automatically update feeds. “The fewer systems you have to use, the better,” says Howard. “Who has time to go into 30 different systems and pull reports? The fact that they’re all in one system with DoubleClick is a big benefit.”
The recent addition of ad verification to DFA means Mindshare can also easily monitor where its clients’ ads are appearing, without having to consult with and re-traffic tags for a third-party. “We can just use DoubleClick Digital Marketing to check and see if we’re running on any non-brand-safe content,” says Beth. “Less work, less cost – and we make sure the client gets the ads they were supposed to.”
As a result, the Mindshare team can devote more time to adding value instead of reporting it...honing the strategy and refining the customer journey. “We’re spending so much less time focused on something like cleaning up reports that we have more time to focus on in-depth analyses to drive business,” says Howard.
A holistic view enables smarter decisions
Because today’s customer journey is non-linear and involves many different touch points, Danny emphasizes the importance of not ignoring upper-funnel marketing activities. He cautions clients to avoid the trap of “optimizing yourself out of consideration” which can result from focusing too narrowly on performance- and direct-response activities. To avoid that pitfall, Mindshare has used the attribution models in Google Analytics to move beyond the “last click wins” model and optimize campaigns across channels and formats.
An example of this is that Mindshare discovered high channel-overlap for one of its retail clients – 28% of this client’s search conversions were assisted by a display interaction, and search impacted 18% of display conversions. In addition, display drove nearly 2x as many last-touch conversions than search. With this data, Mindshare was able to illustrate the synergies of running search and display in tandem, and the value for the client of investing in both brand and performance-oriented messages.
“This data really helps us paint the full picture of how digital media drives sales, whether it’s an immediate conversion or not,” notes Beth. “It helps us further ensure that every media dollar invested creates value for our clients. We are better able to demonstrate how we’re being fiscally responsible with ad dollars by having smarter, and better performing campaigns to drive revenue.”
Powerful reporting means deeper insights for better service
Mindshare’s client is so impressed with the quality of the campaign reports and the insights generated that they’re considering transitioning a weekly reporting meeting into a quarterly meeting. “With these reports, we’re all on the same page looking at the same numbers. That allows us to have more productive, higher-value conversations with the client,” says Beth.
“The Path to Conversion Report – which doesn’t take much time or cost any money to pull,” she continues, “has given us better insights and is actually driving shifts in strategy based on what we’ve learned is working with the consumer,” says Beth. “It really is key to moving forward with digital for us.”
Building a strong foundation for the future
Mindshare is evolving its offerings and solutions – including the development of an “adaptive marketing” model that refines strategy relative to in-market variables – and Danny says the partnership with DoubleClick will be as important as the technology capabilities: “The DoubleClick, Google and Mindshare teams are so in tune you have a one-plus-one-equals-three effect. This will enable us to adapt to the digital landscape and how consumers interact with emerging platforms, offline media, and changes within the marketplace.”
