How branded content contributes to your sales

  • August 11, 2021

Karwei shows good results with first collaborative advertising campaign via prettysocial media

It is well known that branded content contributes to realising brand awareness, but did you know that it also generates quality traffic and sales? iProspect, part of dentsu, and Karwei are the first to set up a joint advertising campaign with prettysocial media. Prettysocial media has a social media network of quality titles such as Buitenleven, Seasons and Wonen Online. Normally prettysocial media shows the commercial messages within their social media as an advertorial, video or social post, supporting the story around the advertiser.

In collaboration with Karwei and iProspect, prettysocial media launched the first direct conversion campaign within their social media network in March 2021. The campaign delivered an excellent performance in terms of quality traffic with a 55% lower cost per session and 75% more time on site than expected. In addition, the campaign had a 200% higher conversion rate based on Google Analytics than other comparable campaigns.

Collaborative ads – what is it?

Collaborative ads are used by e-retailers who do not have a direct e-shop. Collaborative advertisements make it possible for these brands to offer their products, which are available from an intermediary, and to direct the traffic to the e-retailer’s website. These paid social campaigns are already very popular in the telecom industry, iProspect was the first for T-Mobile and OPPO. To display collaborative ads, a retailer must share a relevant segment of their product catalog with an attached Facebook pixel. In this way, the brand can set up a conversion campaign, aimed at consumers who have a plausible chance to convert on the seller’s website.

iProspect and Karwei have decided to take the next step and display collaborative ads with prettysocial media branded content. Three branded content websites have been selected for this campaign, which focus on home & garden, to promote the new Karwei garden collection. The campaign shows excellent results, above benchmarks for both traffic and sales. This ensured that from now on collaborating ads between prettysocial media and Karwei will be run as an always-on layer.

”At Karwei we are very happy with the results of this campaign. We see that our stunning garden collection has reached more potential customers. In addition, collaborative ads fit in well with what we want to radiate as a hardware store with taste.” – Stefan Burrekers, Digital Marketing Coordinator Karwei

Why choose collaborative ads?

Karwei is always looking for opportunities to expand the potential reach for in-market audiences within social media. Reaching these in-market target groups becomes more difficult within the applicable privacy rules.

Previous campaigns within the prettysocial media network had already performed strongly on brand KPIs and attracting new users. Based on these results, the possibility of testing a new advertising format, the collaborative ads, was examined together with prettysocial media. On the advice of prettysocial media, the campaign was set up within the reach of three publishers: Wonenonline.nl, Buitenleven, and Seasons. Three advertisements were shown, focusing on three themes of Karwei’s gardening campaign.

Tips for a successful deployment of collaborative ads

With collaborative ads you can not only see how many and more importantly which products have been sold within a segment, but also outside of a segment within the Collaboration Center. In-segment sales are purchases of the products included in the product catalog segments that were shared with a publisher who displayed the ads. It is not exactly possible to see which products have been sold. Only the number of sales is visible, because of the privacy settings of the collaborative ads. Out-of-segment sales are purchases of the products that were not included in the product catalog segment. These purchases are only visible to the seller. This overview gives a clear picture of how the collaborative ads contribute to the traffic to the website and sales of other products.

“This campaign is an excellent example of how intensive collaboration between agency and operator can lead to great results. iProspect understands very well how a relevant partner on social media can help to achieve the advertiser’s objective. Whether this concerns awareness, qualitative traffic, conversion or, as with this successful Karwei campaign, direct sales.” – Arno Flapper, Manager brand partnerships prettysocial media

View original article in Dutch published by Dentsu: https://www.dentsu.com/nl/nl/hoe-branded-content-bijdraagt-aan-je-omzet#top and in industry leader magazine EMERCE https://www.emerce.nl/cases/effectiever-online-adverteren-met-collaborative-ads-een-campagne-van-karwei