Every advertising campaign is different, but they all begin the same way: with an in-depth conversation about campaign goals. Setting goals—from driving awareness and purchases to boosting engagement—is how you’ll know both what kind of campaign you need to launch, and which ad formats are best for your brand.
Some formats are more effective than others at helping you meet your objectives and KPIs (key performance indicators)—aka, the data that helps you gauge your success, justify your ad spend, and inform decisions about future campaigns. One of those is native ads.
Research shows that native ads can have a big impact on KPIs, enabling advertisers of all kinds to meet their performance goals. For example, with native ad campaigns, companies have seen their brand favorability numbers quadruple compared to the industry average, along with increases in consideration (1.5x the average), message association (8x higher than the average), and awareness (a lift of 10%).
Let’s take a look at how four brands used native ads as part of their strategy to meet their KPIs, and how you can do the same.
Generate Sales & Online Purchases
Connecting through remarketing and data-driven native ads with Vodafone Turkey
When Vodafone Turkey wanted to increase the visibility of its Residential Broadband home internet service and build awareness among potential customers, the communications technology company looked to native ads. Why? They help brands monetize editorial content and create new inventory to successfully reach target audiences wherever they are online.
Since Vodafone Turkey’s primary challenge was to drive awareness and consideration among new customers, it used video ads to educate consumers about its services, then retargeted engaged video viewers with image and motion ads, ultimately driving them to the brand’s website. The multi-format remarketing strategy helped Vodafone build off the momentum of its video ads and reach the consumers who were most interested in its broadband offering.
But that’s not where the brand’s strategy ended. To help Vodafone Turkey ensure it maximized its investment by generating the most leads possible, the brand collected data from target audiences based on video completion rates before retargeting engaged viewers with a sponsored content campaign.
Takeaway: Launching multiple campaigns may help to find your audience
Creating an innovative, multi-format remarking campaign led to native ads becoming the second-highest performing channel in lead generation for Vodafone Turkey’s campaign, smashing the brand’s KPIs. The brand increased its number of highly qualified leads by 39%, all without the use of cookies.
By combining native ads with retargeting, it also doubled its click-through rate performance compared to the previous campaign period. Websites visits increased by nearly a quarte mi r (24%), while the rate of new visitors went up by 11%.
Boosting “Add to cart” performance with BlazePod
For a high-priced consumer product, driving “Add to cart” conversions isn’t always easy. Tracking these conversions can give you vital insight into things like product popularity, your site’s usability, and the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns—but here’s the problem: when a product has a high price point, you can’t meet sales objectives without in-depth customer engagement.
BlazePod, a smart reaction training platform powered by an interactive app and innovative light-up pods, knew that to boost sales online, they’d need to leverage multiple engagement points beyond Google, Facebook, and other go-to social platforms. The answer? Educate and captivate mature and discerning audiences to drive conversions while lowering cost-per-action (CPA).
Retargeting was the go-to strategy for BlazePod too. In the time leading up to the holidays, the brand knew that many consumers were already aware of its product. It just needed to encourage them to take that extra step, turning brand and product familiarity into sales.
By transitioning from targeting a broad audience to retargeting using key insights from network data to launch the native ad campaign, BlazePod went from high initial acquisition costs to an impressive return on ad spent (ROAS). The brand was able to drive high-ticket sales and “Add to cart” conversions at a decreased cost, generating both short-term “Add to cart” conversions and long-term customer engagement — all at a lower cost.
Takeaway: Retargeting strategies nurture consumers
By pairing native ads with a retargeting strategy, BlazePod more than tripled its “Add to cart” conversions compared with a popular social channel at a 79% lower “Add to cart” CPA. The brand was able to nurture consumers along their path to purchase by engaging them on multiple channels and at different stages of the customer journey, maximizing its budget by lowering ad costs. Retargeting customers with native ads resulted in a 5X higher purchase value and a 131% return on ad spend after BlazePod’s holiday campaign in December 2022.
Drive Awareness & Consideration
Engaging Click & Collect shoppers with The Loop
Canadians know The Loop, owned by ARI International, as a world-class shopping experience both at Montreal International Airport and on its duty-free website. One of the business’s core features is Click & Collect, which allows travelers to shop online within 24 hours of arriving at the airport, where they can then retrieve their purchase.
The Loop’s campaign goals included increasing brand awareness even further, boosting the use of Click & Collect, and online revenue. In order to do all of this, though, the brand first needed to generate site traffic and online customer interactions.
Enter image and video ads. With native ads, brands can tweak visuals, headlines, descriptions, and calls to action (CTAs) in order to drive more interest. The Loop took advantage of that opportunity, designing ads that increased conversions while lowering costs. Both image ads and motion ads played key roles in the campaign, linking to a landing page that highlighted the benefits of using The Loop’s Click & Collect e-commerce service (who wants to stand in line at the airport when you can pre-pay online?).
To ensure maximum audience coverage, The Loop took its strategy further and distributed ads across two mobile campaigns: one for English speakers, and one for French speakers. When the English campaign began to deliver better results — more clicks, viewable impressions, and conversions — The Loop launched a mobile retargeting campaign geared toward that audience for increased online sales. The Loop also used an automated bidding tool to bid on impressions that were most likely to drive conversions, ultimately producing a winning creative strategy optimized for maximum performance.
Takeaway: Image and motion ads may boost interest among buyers
Both static and animated ads are go-to formats for boosting brand awareness—perfect for businesses that need to spread the word about their products and services—but image and motion ads on desktop and mobile can also lead to more visitors and sales. For The Loop, they produced a 10% month-over-month (MoM) increase online customer transactions, 22% MoM increase in total revenue online, and 85% MoM increase in website traffic.
Compared with The Loop’s advertising efforts from the previous year, the campaign outcome was even more impressive. Website traffic went up 200% year over year (YOY), online customer transactions rose by 140%, and the brand saw a 103% increase in online revenue—all of which was aided by The Loop’s ability to think on its feet and employ mobile retargeting for its top-performing campaign.
Achieve Lower CPA & CPC
Driving potential car purchases with Renault Australia
These days, much of the car-buying process plays out online, where consumers visit auto manufacturer websites to check out vehicle features, financing options, and more. No wonder Renault Australia—a pioneer in car manufacturing since 1898—wanted to drive site traffic at scale and retarget engaged audiences to improve conversion rates.
With website clicks a priority, lowering the brand’s CPA (cost-per-action) and CPC (cost-per-click) spend was a must. The solution? Test and optimize native ads in a trial campaign designed to produce both greater buyer consideration and more leads.
Renault used image and motion ads across premium publisher properties including blogs, niche websites, and mobile devices. Each ad led to a model-specific landing page. For those visitors who didn’t convert right away, Renault relied on a tracking pixel to identify and retarget them with personalized ads.
With the help of a data marketplace, the brand reached new audiences from among 20,000 distinct segments. Visitors were captured and segmented into interest groups and served engaging messages, allowing Renault to encourage qualified repeat site visits. That led to a large volume of strong new car-shopper leads. Because no campaign is complete without an effective optimization strategy, Renault also employed a smart bidding tool to drive critical conversions, like using the brand’s online car configurator tool.
Takeaway: Experiment and optimize
Renault’s trial native ad campaign produced higher conversions across “car configurations,” “find a dealer locator,” “book a test drive,” and “brochure downloads” tools, but the brand’s costs also went down compared with another native service provider. Cost-per-click (CPC) was 16% lower, while Renault’s cost-per acquisition (CPA) was 51% lower as well. And although native advertising began as an experiment, it later became part of Renault Australia’s always-on strategy.
Time and time again, Taboola’s native ads have either met or exceeded critical mid-funnel KPI industry benchmarks. Interested in learning more about our high-performing native advertising offerings and multi-format campaigns? Contact us today.