Case Study
In October of 2023, Ariat was looking to improve the performance and results of its Amazon DSP advertising, managed directly by Amazon at the time. Blue Wheel was approached to provide optimization recommendations and brand growth strategies. Ariat also wanted to test drive new-to-brand audiences with a custom audience built off consumers who saw a streaming TV ad it ran during Thursday Night Football.
Case Study
In October of 2023, Ariat was looking to improve the performance and results of its Amazon DSP advertising, managed directly by Amazon at the time. Blue Wheel was approached to provide optimization recommendations and brand growth strategies. Ariat also wanted to test drive new-to-brand audiences with a custom audience built off consumers who saw a streaming TV ad it ran during Thursday Night Football.
ROAS
Increase in Return on Ad Spend (Consideration)
NTB sales
Increase in New-to-Brand Sales
ACoS
Decrease in ACoS
ROAS
Increase in Return on Ad Spend (Consideration)
NTB sales
Increase in New-to-Brand Sales
ACoS
Decrease in ACoS
Amazon DSP
Amazon DSP is a Demand-Side platform that allows brands to programmatically buy ads to reach new and existing audiences anywhere they spend their time, on and off Amazon. However, to see success, this strategy requires customization and consistent optimizations. Amazon DSP is not a set-it-and-forget-it approach. Ariat’s main goal was to increase brand awareness while driving topline sales. The challenge presented here was in the shift in spend versus performance when converting from conversion campaigns to consideration campaigns. Without seeing the same performance or Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) typically seen with conversion campaigns, this strategy required a change in expectations when running consideration and test campaigns in order to achieve Ariat’s goal of acquiring new customers.
Blue Wheel set up Q4 campaigns with different DSP supply sources broken out to optimize between on and off-Amazon inventory. Although this was a first-time experience running a custom audience built off a streaming TV audience, these campaigns were driving the highest New-to-Brand performance.
Granularity is the key to making optimizations in Amazon DSP. The team broke out campaigns by the audience and where campaigns would run. When setting up the campaigns, the Blue Wheel team created a Media Plan (semantic mapping) to provide audience recommendations, KPI goals, where we want ads to click to, etc. We then had our creative team edit creatives to accurately meet all available sizes in the Amazon DSP.
Amazon DSP is a Demand-Side platform that allows brands to programmatically buy ads to reach new and existing audiences anywhere they spend their time, on and off Amazon. However, to see success, this strategy requires customization and consistent optimizations. Amazon DSP is not a set-it-and-forget-it approach. Ariat’s main goal was to increase brand awareness while driving topline sales. The challenge presented here was in the shift in spend versus performance when converting from conversion campaigns to consideration campaigns. Without seeing the same performance or Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) typically seen with conversion campaigns, this strategy required a change in expectations when running consideration and test campaigns in order to achieve Ariat’s goal of acquiring new customers.
Blue Wheel set up Q4 campaigns with different DSP supply sources broken out to optimize between on and off-Amazon inventory. Although this was a first-time experience running a custom audience built off a streaming TV audience, these campaigns were driving the highest New-to-Brand performance.
Granularity is the key to making optimizations in Amazon DSP. The team broke out campaigns by the audience and where campaigns would run. When setting up the campaigns, the Blue Wheel team created a Media Plan (semantic mapping) to provide audience recommendations, KPI goals, where we want ads to click to, etc. We then had our creative team edit creatives to accurately meet all available sizes in the Amazon DSP.
When providing live campaign performance updates, these optimizations improved performance and highlighted key Q4 initiatives, such as the Thursday Night Football placement.
Using custom creatives for consideration campaigns, we updated auto-generated creatives based on their Amazon ASINs with company logos and custom headlines to make the ads more appealing to consumers.
From lead generation to final sale, we wanted to focus on certain categories, leveraging the brand store to help convert.
We set guidelines for the influencers creating the videos, ensuring the right information is conveyed while still giving them flexibility to be creative and use their own voice.
In November 2023, we reevaluated and launched new storylines. After determining many campaigns were driving to PDPs and not to landing pages on the brand store, we revisited the entire process to ensure all stories were working holistically together through the entire funnel.
After making in-flight optimizations, we saw performance improve even more in December with less ad spend due to in-flight optimizations, such as removing or pausing inefficient supply and audiences and updating creatives.
The Blue Wheel team successfully solved Ariat’s pain points by providing clear directions on how to improve performance. By allowing us the ability to shift ad spend across different line items, the team was able to make optimizations to drive the highest ROAS and New-to-Brand sales.
Bringing our DSP advertising under the Blue Wheel umbrella has allowed Ariat to manage our marketing portfolio holistically, gain insights from our campaigns from both the display and sponsored perspective, and created efficiencies in the ability to pivot quickly based on trends and optimalizations.
Ariat
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