Case Studies – My Blog

How to decrease app CPI with creative testing: Joom and Aitarget Tech case study

aitarget — Wed, 11 May 2022 14:06:24 +0000

Can creative’s color or price placement affect application cost per install? With the Aitarget Tech platform this and other hypotheses were tested for Joom — a global mobile marketplace specialising in cross-boarder e-commerce. We share the results and explain the approach of process automation.

The goal is to cut CPI

Joom — cross-platform application for shopping in Europe and Asia. The majority of users make purchases with mobile devices, so Joom’s main goal was to increase click-through rate with the help of creatives in dynamic advertising and minimize application cost per install for new users.

The key challenges for testing are creatives localization for multiple geographics when working with multi million feeds and organization of fast creatives development. Aitarget Tech helped to deal with these issues.

Aitarget Tech allows to test static creatives in dynamic advertising. You can test static elements such as unique selling proposition, call to action, promo codes, price tags and dynamic ones that are collected from product feed, for example, price values, discounts, product cards.

The placement, color and shape of every element can be tested. With Aitarget Tech branded templates are automatically applied to all SKUs in selected product sets.

What is tested

There are plenty of categories with multi million SKUs. Goods selected for advertising based on Joom’s internal statistics including number of purchases, views, reviews and price compared with substitutes.

Every week the creatives are tested. Those that do not fit the KPI are needed to be quickly replaced. If results of testing are acceptable, new creatives are introduced simultaneously. Joom tests 5–6 creatives monthly. The process is organized through automation and fast development of overlays — templates applied to the original product image, containing dynamically changing data, that highlights its main features.

Creatives were made in Aitarget Tech platform editor. This speeded up the process without overloading designers with additional work.

Overlays are applied to product cards, making them more appealing for users.

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Price tag on the left lowers CPI

We tested several different creatives to verify the hypothesis that price tag can affect the install cost.

Firstly, we tested the price tag, shape, color, placement and frame around the product. It is hard to believe that only one design element can affect the result, but we have learnt that the price tag placed on the top right corner gives worse performance.

Manner or matter?

Secondly, we tested different price tags. Previous experiments had shown that the top left corner is the best working placement. We decided to keep it there, but change color and shape.

The aim was to replace the standard price tag to a custom one, using different colors, shapes and font sizes. The idea behind that is to emphasize the prices, raise click through rate and lower CPI.
Only one detail — the price that is hard to integrate into a design beautifully has a significant effect on creative performance results.

New experiments show that even tiny details like shape and color of badge sometimes have greater impact on campaign results than its subject.

Localization

Joom is an international marketplace that advertises in many countries. For DPA-advertising we are using catalogs with localized advertising messages. The main challenge is to adapt personalized messages to diverse audiences. For example, words in different languages take different amounts of space on the creative.

In this case the Aitarget Tech platform also helped to adapt overlay design and quickly scale positive results from one market to another, using product feeds,

You can test flags, currency, logos of local payment service providers — any element that helps to identify an application with its country. Also, it can be a tool to test creatives with local celebrities and make collaborations.

Here we tested flags, currencies and short advertising messages, which helped to lower install cost to 80%. Localization with flags did not work as we had expected, however, it does not mean that it does not work at all. In each particular case you should test and see for yourself.

Results: why an automated approach helps testing

With quick creatives development and their automatic application to product feeds Joom is testing many different hypotheses simultaneously, scaling creative solutions on different markets.

Save time while making creatives and test more hypotheses like Joom – book a call with our team where we will make a short demo of the Aitarget Tech platform and select creatives testing plan based on your business goals.

Book a demo call

Learn more on Aitarget Tech website.

Crafting Facebook Ads 5 Days Ahead of Major Seasonal Launch

aitarget — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 16:05:39 +0000

When it comes to the most important weeks each year for e-commerce, Christmas and Black Friday battle for the gold medal. But how do you compete, when everyone else is throwing all their efforts into maximizing those opportunities too? Customers are looking, can you connect?

Adidas and Reebok wanted to find the best approach for Facebook promotion at, so they turned to Aitarget Tech, Facebook Marketing Partner, for help.

We not only suggested training, but also took on a significant proportion of the work for their campaigns: reviewing ad account structure, growth hacking, making dynamic ad creatives and implementing new Facebook tools. How did Aitarget Tech do it?

Here we outline the strategies used and the results achieved.

Black Friday looms: One week, is there time?

Preparations for the Adidas and Reebok Black Friday ads started only a week before the launch. The success of the campaign would depend on zero stage work: ad account structure and also the product feed and product catalog adjustments.

First, we reviewed the Adidas and Reebok ad accounts and took action to better set them up for success by restructuring their accounts in order to avoid overlapping audiences.

“At Facebook auction, at any given time, only one ad can succeed over all other ads that target the same audience (it is not important whether it is a single advertiser or many), while the others have to wait their turn. Over time, the highest bidder tends to show better performing ads. Those standing in line aren’t able to show Facebook their efficacy, so they will only be shown rarely or not at all. In order to avoid audience overlaps by ad sets and paying twice for your own audience, an ad set’s audience should be excluded from one another.” – Lisa Leibe, Adidas and Reebok account manager at Aitarget Tech

“The standard approach was to exclude website audiences from the detailed targeting audience. However, we didn’t have 100 per cent cross-minuses. Previously, there was more detailed targeting based on interest and CRM, but within the framework of Black Friday, on the advice of the Aitarget team, we tried to replace interests with a Lookalike audience and use a complete cross-minus approach.” – Leading Specialist Performance Media, Adidas

The result was that our plan for Black Friday consisted of various types of campaign:

Video creatives and App Install objective – the largest number of creatives and biggest budget;
Dynamic ads for Reebok and Adidas catalog sales;
Video creatives and Conversion (purchase) objective for Reebok – a smaller part.

Our strategy relied on the algorithms in the settings, choosing automatic campaigns and auto-placements, while optimization was set for the most important actions: purchases and installs.

The core of the whole Black Friday campaign was product ads in various formats: Dynamic Ads and multiple videos. All formats were created from images in the Adidas and Reebok product catalogs. Ads buying went through GroupM, part of the world’s largest media agency.

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Dynamic Ads for multiple audiences

When Black Friday campaigns began, Reebok didn’t have any Dynamic Ads campaigns launched. So to prepare for their launch, Aitarget Tech had to help them quickly upgrade and update their product feed and adjust it to a Facebook-friendly format to create a catalog.

“Adidas used to have Dynamic Ads on Facebook as part of their always-on activities, but more recently the format had only been used to support short promo-campaigns in emergency situations. Due to the different budget allocations between the app and website since last year, there was no unified summary of results for Adidas. Yet, this season Dynamic Ads were used for the first time with Reebok, and we are satisfied with the result.” – Leading Specialist Performance Media, Adidas

Aitarget Tech was used to create a single brand identity on social media. The platform automatically processed all product images and meshed with feed data, so that users can immediately dive into product, discount and offer in the ads.

“Overlays are, without a doubt, a blessing for anyone pursuing performance goals by posting on Facebook.” – Junior Specialist Performance Media at Adidas

Making the products personal: 51 Videos from 26,000 Product Images

Aitarget Tech’s strategy for Adidas and Reebok for the Black Friday video campaign was to split the audience into segments and generate a variety of videos with various product sets.

This allowed us to make the messages each audience received more personal.

Aitarget Tech machine learning found the best position and size for the products and edited the cards. The same feed was used for the Dynamic Ads to create multiple videos.

All of the videos were created using the Aitarget Tech tool based on the feed and branded video templates, developed by the Aitarget Tech creative studio for Adidas and Reebok.

The brands created products lists, which were used for the Black Friday sale. The Aitarget Tech tool automatically generated videos for various audiences.

“A huge thank you to Aitarget Tech for the work they achieved within such a short period of time on creating product videos from our catalogs for both brands. Of course, the time-saving was highly appreciated. Comparisons between videos and statics are quite difficult for Adidas to evaluate within the framework of key metrics, since they use auto-placements, where both static creatives and videos are used. In future, we will try to create a reliable A/B test. We understand that success depends not only on the creatives, but also on the offer itself.” – Leading Specialist Performance Media, Adidas

Using new tools to optimize results

For the best video-to-app campaigns block, Aitarget Tech recommended using Facebook Automated App Ads. These are a new Facebook tool for optimal campaign performances. As Facebook explains: “The algorithm finds the best combinations of creatives, audience and placements with no advertiser’s presence needed, simplifying the process and maximizing results.”

Adidas and Reebok used Facebook Automated App Ads in order to improve the efficiency of video and app installs campaigns. While the automated campaigns were launched with an App Installs objective, they were also good at producing conversions.

“Automated campaigns were a great find for us! Thanks to the Aitarget managers for that. The efficacy of automated campaigns with app installs was very high, not only in terms of CPI, but also in terms of sales. As for our paid media channels, sales share through the app during the promo exceeded the share of sales from the site. I think this is the cumulative effect of both our general Black Friday approach this season and the changes made to our Facebook campaign strategy.” – Junior Specialist Performance Media at Adidas

Summary and Results

Overall, the campaign was a success. Not only did it achieve metric results, Adidas and Reebok also saved resources while launching ad campaigns under tight deadlines during high season.

During the campaign Adidas and Reebok saves more than 99 hours on producing creatives, 26,500 product cards were processed and 51 videos were generated.

“Aitarget Tech often conducts training programs on Facebook and Instagram for its clients. Adidas approached us before the big launch on Black Friday, to receive consultation on how to best spend their budget and get optimal results. But in the end, we thoroughly analyzed all of their active placements, helped introduce new Facebook tools into their work, restructured the accounts and helped produce creatives for a large-scale campaign.” – Business development specialist at Aitarget Tech.

Save time while making creatives and test more hypotheses like Adidas – book a call with our team where we will make a short demo of the Aitarget Tech platform and select creatives testing plan based on your business goals.

Book a demo call

Learn more on Aitarget Tech website.

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round…

aitarget — Fri, 22 Oct 2021 15:38:56 +0000

New Panoramic Videos capture user attention and boost advertiser results

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s prediction in February 2017 that video, like mobile, would become “a mega trend” for social media advertisers has certainly come to fruition.

Video rules nowadays: video content is viewed by more than two billion active Facebook users each month, with around one hundred million video hours consumed per day. For business, sixty per cent of social media marketers now use videos in their advertising.

There are a variety of ways you can easily use videos to boost your connection to those who could be interested in your products in services. Facebook recommends avoiding static images in ads; instead generate some movement and energy by creating slide-show clips.

That’s just the beginning. The launch of panoramic clips into Facebook News Feed turned heads and spun everything on its axis. Now users can just tilt their smartphone or click an image on their desktop and change their viewing angle on an advertisement. 360 Video immerses users in a visual experience from all angles, and gives them control.

Such user immersion and engagement offers plenty of opportunities for smart advertisers.

While it’s easy to envisage the use of 360 Video for entertainments like sports and movies, it can also be used very effectively for industries which aren’t so interactive or focused on user experience and emotions. One recent example is an Aitarget’s client in the Fintech industry.

Client Partner at Aitarget, says:

“Being familiar with the challenges facing the Fintech industry in social media advertising, here at Aitarget we note the challenge of monotonous creatives. Too many companies use stereotypical images of stock graphs and men in suits. These types of creatives don’t bring good results because they fail to grab audience attention. This needs to change. We are sure it’s possible to be innovative regardless of your industry, so we offer our fintech clients interactive tools like 360 Video. It stands out from the crowd; nobody in the fintech industry had ever used it and this format is captivating for users who see it appear in the Facebook News Feed.”

Barriers are being broken down between brands and social media users. While creative is key, businesses can now use disruptive practices in social media, such as those provided by Aitarget, to more directly and affordably connect.

“It’s time to disrupt this archaic Mad Men model, eliminating the silos between creatives, clients and consumers, and stripping away anything that doesn’t add to creative output,” Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer at Procter & Gamble, told an industry conference in March. “If 2017 was the year of the wake-up call, 2018 is the year we take back control to transform the industry through mass disruption.”

Aitarget is all about thinking outside the box and providing creative social media solutions to our clients. We helped Forex4you become one of the first brokers to successfully use 360 Video in Facebook advertising.Taking a different look: a case study of Forex4you’s success with Aitarget

Their advertising campaign aimed to expand their customer base and encourage new users to register with their app. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth?

Aitarget suggested an innovative approach to Forex4you, using 360 Video to provide a sense of user immersion to their app interface and showcasing it from a variety of angles.

Forex4you is an international company that provides online trading services via a platform and an app and seeks to make Forex trading clear and accessible for a wide audience.

Juris Leznins, Head Of Marketing at E-Global Trade & Finance Group, Inc.:

“We, as an open-minded broker, are always looking for opportunities to increase the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. With this particular campaign we wanted to see if 360 video ad will be more attractive compared to the simple video ad.”

Forex4you operates worldwide, but this campaign focused on Thailand.

As a demonstration of the effectiveness of 360 Video, Aitarget and Forex4you ran a A/B test campaign for a fortnight, with two types of ad sets both focused on the same broad audience of 25-50 year old male Android users in Thailand. The first ad set included a standard (non-interactive) video with app demonstration. For the second, 360 Video was utilised.

The A/B test for the first two weeks of the ad sets impression showed that panoramic video cut the cost per new user registration by 20%. Use of 360 Video not only made the company stand out in a crowded market, it significantly improved core metrics.

MegaFon Triples Its Volume

aitarget — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 13:40:24 +0000

Telco company multiplies its success with Carousel in Instagram Stories

Thanks to its partnership with Aitarget, digital opportunities company MegaFon tripled its click-through results while dramatically dropping CPC using a new video ad format Carousel in Instagram Stories.

When launched, advertisers can use this format to tell a story about their products, promotional campaigns, and services in three full screen parts, rather than a single photo or video. From late 2018, up to 10 horizontal cards can be applied for Carousels in Stories.

After being announced, Carousel in Instagram Stories became available to Aitarget’s clients thanks to our tool and status as a Facebook and Instagram marketing partner.

The Stories format in general has rapidly gained popularity, with daily users leaping from 100 million to 400 million users between October 2016 and June 2018. Engaging and immersive, it’s become the fastest-growing channel ever seen on Facebook and Instagram.

By the beginning of 2019, the number of daily Stories users reached 500 million.

Stories gives brands and users unlimited possibilities for interaction in a playful and expressive way. Real-time unfiltered Stories can elicit heightened emotions in viewers and encourage communication. According to 2017 statistics, one in five Stories has organic reactions with direct responses from its viewers.

Businesses produce one third of the most-viewed Stories on Instagram, and the format remains profitable. Campaigns can be created for any segment of the marketing funnel: from Reach, Brand Awareness, and Video Views, to Lead Generation, Conversion, and App Installs.

Ads in Stories can consist of both static images (did you know, the Aitarget tool supportsautomatic creation of full-screen images based on any ratio images) and videos. At the same time, mobile-first videos are just as popular. Cisco estimates that nearly 80% percent of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2022. According to the data from Facebook, one and a half times more people watch videos every day on smartphones compared to watching videos on computers. As for Instagram, it is estimated that 40% of Stories are videos.

Case Study: MegaFon embraces video

MegaFon launched the first-ever video Carousel in Instagram Stories with three videos in its “Two smartphones for the price of one” promotional campaign.

The Media Instinct Group agency created three consecutive videos, all with the same plot. The first and the second stories were about a man and a woman wondering about the best present to buy for the upcoming holidays. The third video presented the solution: two smartphones, one for him and one for her.

“The news about the new format in Instagram was very timely,” senior performance specialist at Media Instinct Group. “This format was perfect for the creative concept of upcoming gender-related holidays. Thanks to our partners at Aitarget, we managed to quickly agree on all the materials and have time to become one of the first to utilise the format.”

Carousel in Instagram Stories was added to MegaFon’s advertising campaign at the last stage, aiming to showcase its offer to the maximum audience and increase website traffic.

Aitarget’s Lead Customer Development Manager, says:

“From early on the campaign showed an incredible success. Immediately after its launch, we noticed the decreasing level of CPC, the increase in CTR, as well as the general increase in audience reach.”

The click-through rate for MegaFon’s Carousel in Instagram Stories campaign leapt to 366% of the level of a standard Instagram Stories campaign. At the same time, the CPC dropped to a quarter of the prior level.

More than three times the reach at less than a third of the price. This result demonstrates the potential of the new Carousel for Instagram Stories format, especially when paired with the fast-growing popularity of mobile videos.

“We are interested in increasing the share of video in our split, and given the possibilities of the placement, the format can become extremely effective for our audience,” says manager for media planning in digital media at MegaFon.

Mapping out a Path to Success

aitarget — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 13:19:44 +0000

How a navigation app doubled installs with Aitarget’s automation tool

How do you stand out from the crowd and increase brand awareness in a market that’s saturated with a variety of similar products? That was the challenge facing MAPS.ME, a mobile application that offers offline maps of all the countries in the world, for free.

The map app market is dominated by Google Maps, which is favored by 70 percent of iPhone users. MAPS.ME partnered with Aitarget to increase awareness of their brand, to scale and amplify its reach. We launched a campaign to strengthen its acquisition rate among mobile users, and spread its reputation as a trusted offline map source to a much larger audience.

Why a brand awareness campaign?

Brand awareness campaigns target people who are most likely to be interested in a business, as Facebook connects brands with users who are similar to their current clients.

Such campaigns help businesses introduce people to their brand and products, by promotion “in the places where people discover new things” – among Facebook and Instagram communities who watch videos and are looking to discover new things every day.

A well-executed campaign can prompt an audience to explore a businesses website, page, or app, and encourage them to remember the creative ads, and therefore the brand or product.

The challenge

In a saturated market for map applications, the main challenge for Aitarget and MAPS.ME was to increase their app’s market share and establish its position as the most popular product in their niche.

The solution

While traditional brand awareness campaigns on social media can be great for brands, they cannot be optimised for installs. MAPS.ME was keen to increase both overall awareness of its brand and the number of installs of its app. So we came up with a cost-effective solution to run an App Install campaign and restrict the CPI for each region through automation rules. Aitarget’s automated bid control strategy helped our client get a significant reach.

“In terms of scale and high-quality traffic, Facebook and Instagram are irreplaceable partners,” said Ex Vice-President of Mail.RU Group. “Working with Aitarget let us get maximum profit.”

The campaign reached 55 million users in more than 50 countries, and contributed to a doubling in MAPS.ME’s mobile app installs, as well as +9 points install growth rate for from-click-to-install conversions. More installs, and much greater brand awareness.

“Aitarget is a really powerful tool for optimising Facebook campaigns,” said CMO at MAPS.ME. “It helps us to support thousands of real-time working creatives. We are really excited to use the Automation tool which helps us to acquire thousands of high-quality installs every day with low CPI.”

Linguistic Twist

aitarget — Sat, 06 Feb 2021 15:22:20 +0000

A success story about promoting a mobile app for learning foreign languages on Facebook and Instagram

Edutainment is a trendy interactive learning method. Put simply, it is educational content served in an entertaining format. Edutainment is gaining particular popularity among developers in the fast-growing category of educational mobile apps. In 2018, educational apps hit first place on Google Play with a share of 8.29% and third place in the Apple App Store with a share of 8.5%.

Source: Top-10 Google Play App categories as of 1st quarter 2018, Statista

Source: Top-10 Apple App Store categories in September 2018, Statista

Among edutainment apps, Lingo Vocabulary Trainer from Easy Language is growing rapidly. It is an assistant for memorising words in English, French, German, Spanish, and seven other languages. Within the app, users either readily learn languages or practice online with other players from all over the world.

Source: Lingo Play – English Lessons Online

Lingo Vocabulary Trainer set up a promotion on Facebook and Instagram. First, the goal was to increase app installs, then the founders went further and tracked product payback metrics, aiming to increase in-app purchases. We applied Aitarget’s tunnel budget automation strategy at both stages and got a positive performance results in both cases.

Stage 1: double growth in installs with reduced CPI

Lingo Vocabulary Trainer app earns money from subscriptions. Users from Russia, the US, the UK, Spain and other countries can learn languages with their monthly subscription to the Lingo app.

App developers from Easy Language searched for a way to increase app installs globally in the long-term with a cost per install not extending beyond a fixed number.

To ensure that the campaign CPI did not go beyond the limits, Aitarget applied a tunnel automation strategy that adjusted the budget depending on ad results.

The campaign showed the desired result right at the end of the first week on the back of chosen strategy. Campaign budget decreased, the banner CTR increased, CPI reduced by half, and install numbers grew up to 50%.

The success of the tunnel automation strategy is even clearer in the results for the second stage, where it helped to achieve almost two-fold growth of in-app purchases.

Stage 2: automatic growth of purchases by 170%

Together with Easy Language, we identified four marketing objectives:

Get as many in-app paid subscriptions as possible;
Keep cost per purchase at the same level as before to keep the margin;
Help Service during a Facebook campaign teamwork; and
Achieve stability – important to predict installs, costs, and LTV for a growing business.

We provided sustainable traffic to the mobile app within the first stage when the campaign experienced a halving of CPI and install numbers grew up to 50%.

So in Stage 2, we focused on in-app purchase cost. Without the rules of automation, the number of purchases per day did not exceed 50, while the cost per purchase was unstable.

To improve the results, we set up three optimisation rules with different action scenarios for each. In Facebook Ads Manager, we set the CPM bid and optimisation for CPI.

We also chose a narrow band for the cost of in-app purchase between Х_max and X_min, setting up the bid for cost per purchase.

Ruleset 1

If the cost of at least one in-app purchase exceeds Х_max, while the bid starts increasing from 0.31 USD, then the robot reduces the bid by 0.05 USD.

The output: if traffic is expensive for us, we’ll turn off the ad set.

Ruleset 2

If the cost of at least one in-app purchase is less than Х_min, while the bid doesn’t exceed the set maximum of 3 USD, then the robot increase the bid by 0.05 USD.

The output: when the cost of purchase is acceptable, we are likely to buy such cheap purchases more.

Ruleset 3

Our third ruleset was an Accelerated Delivery. For this spend, bid, and a particular hour of performance should be set. Depending on whether the ad is shown before a certain hour or after, we limit spending for the previous hour and increase the bid so that ads perform faster.

For example, if the amount spent and a bid are less than 2.3 USD by 7am, then the bid will grow by 0.05 USD. We will also grow the bid if the amount spent and a bid are less than 3.1 USD after 7am.

The output: we accelerate the delivery of ads depending on the time of day, and therefore, user activity with the corresponding spend.

With Aitarget automations, Lingo Vocabulary Trainer sales increased by 170%. At the same time, the cost per purchase inside the app was kept within the set tunnel.

Thus, Lingo Vocabulary Trainer generated sales with a high scale and buoyant profit with Aitarget advertising on Facebook & Instagram.

“This is a great tool for Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns optimisation,” founder of Lingo Vocabulary Trainer. “It helps to achieve your KPI in a way you cannot approach via Facebook tools. Thanks to Aitarget’s solution, our CVR went up to 10%, we see profit growth, and two-times ad cost reduction.”

adidas Success Story: 42% Conversion Growth with Facebook Collections

aitarget — Mon, 07 Dec 2020 16:34:16 +0000

Alexander, a Digital Marketing Specialist at adidas, and Bulat, Head of Brand and Agencies Development at Aitarget, share their experience of increasing ad conversions by 42% using Facebook Collections

Challenge

This summer, adidas decided to change their Facebook ads strategy with the goal of increasing both the number of orders and average sale.

Together with Aitarget, adidas decided to test Collections, a new Facebook feed mobile ad format that pairs video and images with relevant products to drive discovery.

The new format was intended to serve two purposes:

Increase conversions from mobile traffic: while mobile traffic was rising, its conversion rate had been lower than desktop traffic;
Inform users about new adidas collections: the new collections are more lucrative.

Creatives

There were different Collection ads from three categories: Running, Soccer, and Originals. The audiences were specified for each, based on interests and custom audiences collected from users’ behaviour on the adidas website.

The creative comprised a brand video of the new collection with the products from the video under it. A click on a particular product opened a catalogue of all items from the new collection. All products were cached in advance, so the webpage loaded immediately as soon as a user went to the website.

The ads were optimised for website conversions and shown only to the users that would be more likely to make a purchase.

Results

15% growth in average spend;
42% growth in conversion rate;
120% growth in average interaction with the ad.

“We are satisfied with the test of the Collections format. The results say it all. On top of that, the new format helped to tie up the goals of our brand marketing and e-commerce departments: to gain awareness and interaction with prioritised collections, and to get the conversion traffic in the webstore,” says Alexander, a digital marketing specialist at adidas.

Product Ratings in Dynamic Ads Increased Sales Efficiency by 19%

aitarget — Tue, 29 Sep 2020 11:59:29 +0000

Feedback, reviews, unboxing videos, and tips in social networks. Customers consider all these features before making a purchase. And the more complex and expensive the product, the more time a customer spends studying the experiences of others with that product. Together with the iConText agency, the Aitarget team developed and launched a Facebook campaign with product ratings for Askona, the largest manufacturer of anatomic mattresses and sleep products. Keep reading to learn how we increased Askona’s revenue and sales by 19%.

Most buyers in the US spend 5 to 10 minutes watching reviews before buying a product — and that’s in the era of ultra-fast content consumption! US shoppers consider the total number of stars next to a product the second most important factor when evaluating a business (after review novelty).

We applied this trend together with Askona and saw a positive impact on all KPIs.

Objective and Preparation

Users tend to rely on feedback when purchasing products for healthy sleep. However, the size of a brand catalog and the constant updates of product ratings are two obstacles that stand between the user and a purchase.

Eduard Gviciani, Head of the targeted advertising group at iConText agency, explained Askona’s task:

“Initially, there was a need to improve the visual component of dynamic campaigns as the standard tools of the site could not make use of the full potential of the goods (such parameters as old/new price, discount percentage, and other customization options, including rating based on customer feedback).”

Star campaigns in detail

For our test, we pit campaigns with branded style overlays (with and without stars) against Askona’s campaigns with equal settings. In all cases, campaigns with the Catalog Sales objective were rolled out based on the same product catalog. To make the test consistent, Stories placement was disabled (the client hadn’t used this placement in previous campaigns).

As such, we only replaced creatives in the broad audience campaign and in two retargeting campaigns: one for products less than $130 and another for products over $130. A 7–14 day attribution window was set for both campaigns. Two weeks after the start date, we measured the results of the campaigns.

Here are the trends.

We spotted a significant decline in the bounce rate for all three campaigns – a 51% decrease compared to the ads without overlays. At the same time, the number of purchases increased by 19%, and there were 2.3 times more visits that resulted in a purchase. Earnings generated by ads with overlays also increased by 19% with equal promotion costs.

Head of Askona’s conversion marketing department, said about the results:
‘Thanks to the visual improvements to our ads, we were able to see an increase both in performance results and users behavior. In addition, we liked the relative simplicity of implementation, with no significant labor costs required from Askona.’

We also checked to what extent ratings made ads more engaging. We compared the CTRs of two types of ads with Askona brand overlays — one with the product rating and one without. The ad with stars showed a double CTR.

Facebook Campaign Simple Structure Reduces Cost per Action for Ecommerce

aitarget — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 08:58:24 +0000

Aitarget, a Facebook marketing partner, managed to decrease cost per purchase for 139DEC’s online store by 70% simply by making a few improvements to the settings of their Facebook and Instagram campaigns.

This article was first published on medium.com

Cold audience acquisition on Facebook and Instagram can be tricky for e-commerce brands since customers are constantly bombarded by offers. Brands end up suffering from high costs on customer acquisition.

However, Aitarget has proven it is possible to quadruple your results by just fine-tuning campaign settings. Keep reading to find out how!

The case of real eCommerce

We collaborated with 139DEC, a fashion brand with their own production and global delivery, and key markets in the US and the UK. They had two problems: average spending on cold audience engagement exceeded their KPI (between January 1 and February 13), and creative diversity was limited.

To break this trend, Aitarget and 139DEC developed a range of hypotheses as well as a step-by-step plan.

Partner, 139DEC:

We have a small in-house marketing team, so working with high-ticket products on specific audiences and global markets was a real challenge for us. We really like how the process of working with Aitarget looks like: weekly calls with their internal team, step-by-step plans tailored for our product and audience. And, of course, their huge background helps us generate new ideas on how we can use Facebook ads to their full potential.

Сlient partner, Aitarget:

The client came to us with the specific task of decreasing CPP on a cold audience. We reviewed their campaigns, developed a strategy of tests for each funnel stage (cold, warm, hot), and started the consistent implementation of each hypothesis.

Campaign summary

What we did first was split the audience into two categories: Lookalike and Interest-Based.

The Lookalike Audience was created based on current customers’ emailsand Facebook Pixel data on the website’s Purchase event. We merged the lookalikes from both sources into one ad set so that the algorithm could learn from a broader pool of data.

The core of the second ad set targeting was fashion-related interests and excluded all Lookalikes.

We then rolled out two campaigns: one for Conversions and a second for Catalogue Sales.

They were optimized based on the following principle: eliminate excessive ad sets through consolidation to ensure maximum placement and audience liquidity. As such, there were just two ad sets in each campaign.

After, we enabled automatic placements, which is considered the best practice. It allows the algorithms to optimize impressions across multiple platforms within the ecosystem, delivering the ad when and where it is best and cheaper to reach users within the target audience.

For handling the campaign budget, we recommended Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO). The tool lets you set the overall campaign budget and then uses algorithms to dynamically distribute the budgeted funds between ad sets based on their effectiveness.

For the Conversions campaign, we used 139DEC’s branded videos and images. For Dynamic Ads in the Catalogue Sales campaign, we enriched product images with overlays of additional data (sale price) made with Aitarget Tech.

After the launch, we monitored the effect constantly.

Сlient partner, Aitarget:

The Aitarget team monitored the campaigns on a regular basis using automations that notified us all if ad sets brought results that exceeded KPI. We organized weekly syncs with 139DEC to discuss the results and new hypotheses. We turned off ads that didn’t satisfy us with their performance and scaled the ones which showed potential for reaching CPP and ROAS goals. This approach helped us to scale the number of purchases while decreasing CPP.

The final result? CPP on cold audiences went down by 77% (between February 14 and March 31).

A Collection of Beauty

aitarget — Sun, 28 Jun 2020 16:17:41 +0000

How M·A·C Cosmetics helped lay the foundation for the new Instagram Collection ad format

Globally popular brand M·A·C Cosmetics teamed with Aitarget, Isobar Moscow, and iProspect Russia to become one of the first companies in Eastern Europe to run ads in Instagram Collection.

Instagram Collection is a new beta format that blends a title video or an image with a product catalogue below. It was created as an analogue of Facebook Collection.

This opens up a new advertising opportunity for brands, another chance to connect with Instagram’s one billion users.

Collection for Facebook was released last spring and received positive reviews from many brands. Aitarget’s experience with adidas demonstrated a 42% increase in conversions.

The Collection format is designed to maximise engagement from a mobile audience. Advertising in the format tells a brand story through a head video or image and also shows several products or bestsellers in one sponsored post. A row of individual products are presented in a swipeable carousel which leads to a Canvas catalogue inside the platform.

Instagram/Composite. Source: Ad Age

From the user’s side, Collection makes it easy to search, browse, and buy products and special offers through a visually attractive interactive and organically built-in creative. Potential customers can then tap on a product in the carousel, learn about all the products in the inner catalogue, and visit the brand’s website for purchasing.

For Instagram, Collection has been slightly modified and optimised: it supports purchases inside the application itself. This allows users to complete the consumer funnel cycle without leaving the platform.

Another difference: whereas in Facebook Collection tapping on a particular product opens a new catalogue which prioritises that specific product, in Instagram Collection tapping on any of the product photos takes you to the same location in the Canvas.

The carousel for Instagram Collection has three product images, rather than the four in Facebook Collection. However, to launch an Instagram Collection ad you will need a catalogue of at least four products for the Canvas.

“Instagram is a business’s visual shop on mobile, and we’re seeing more people seek out businesses there,” says Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, commenting on the launch of Instagram Collection.

Instagram Collection is ideal for e-commerce, especially for beauty and fashion brands because they are particularly strong on Instagram in terms of content sharing and fan base.

More than 200 million Instagram users follow fashion-related accounts, and nine of the top ten accounts that beauty Instagrammers follow are beauty brands (statistics as at April 2018).

While news about Instagram Collection broke in February, the format is currently only available to certain brands through Facebook marketing partners, such as Aitarget.

“Instagram Collection is ideal for creating a store in which users can select products without leaving the favourite app. is new option is more fitting of the title Instagram Shopping. The emergence of the format is a landmark event for the e-com industry,” says Lead Customer Development Manager at Aitarget.

Thanks to a collaboration between M∙A∙C Cosmetics, Aitarget, and advertising agencies, the Russian audience on Instagram was first introduced to the breakthrough format.

The M∙A∙C Cosmetics campaign showed success after the first week of delivery: the CPC dropped by 20%, and the CPO decreased by 22% with a proportional growth of the CTR.

“We are pleased that M∙A∙C Cosmetics, the leading brand of professional cosmetics, was one of the first to test the Instagram Collection format. Special aesthetics and innovative brand concepts make M.A.C a trendsetter and a pioneer for the brightest and most promising innovations in marketing and promotion. The Instagram Collection format has seamlessly blended in the communication with our customer: from professional make-up artists to makeup amateurs and rookies, it also made the client’s way to purchasing much shorter and more convenient,” says Corporate Media Manager at Estée Lauder.

The new format may represent a shift in digital marketing strategies.

The interactive nature of such product branding strategy is not only convenient for consumers. Collection also allows companies to neatly connect social media content with sales and ROI that go through them. It provides valuable information about where the marketing assets should be focused, and where customers make their purchases.

These Collection ads validate a user before they go to a brand’s website, leading to conversion rates that are likely to be superior to other ad types.

Because of these advantages, the Collection format could become popular beyond Facebook and Instagram, adapted to replace traditional banners in online advertising.

Case Studies – My Blog

How to decrease app CPI with creative testing: Joom and Aitarget Tech case study

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What is tested

Price tag on the left lowers CPI

Manner or matter?

Localization

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Black Friday looms: One week, is there time?

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Telco company multiplies its success with Carousel in Instagram Stories

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How a navigation app doubled installs with Aitarget’s automation tool

Why a brand awareness campaign?

The challenge

The solution

Linguistic Twist

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Stage 1: double growth in installs with reduced CPI

Stage 2: automatic growth of purchases by 170%

adidas Success Story: 42% Conversion Growth with Facebook Collections

Alexander, a Digital Marketing Specialist at adidas, and Bulat, Head of Brand and Agencies Development at Aitarget, share their experience of increasing ad conversions by 42% using Facebook Collections

Challenge

Creatives

Results

Product Ratings in Dynamic Ads Increased Sales Efficiency by 19%

Objective and Preparation

Star campaigns in detail

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Aitarget, a Facebook marketing partner, managed to decrease cost per purchase for 139DEC’s online store by 70% simply by making a few improvements to the settings of their Facebook and Instagram campaigns.

The case of real eCommerce

Campaign summary

A Collection of Beauty

How M·A·C Cosmetics helped lay the foundation for the new Instagram Collection ad format

A success story about promoting a mobile app for learning foreign languages on Facebook and Instagram