Unilever's recipe for success with retail data

“Partnering with The Trade Desk and foodpanda played a crucial role in the success of our recent campaign for Knorr, enabling us to reach new audience segments on the open internet. We were extremely pleased with the significant increases in add-to-cart rates, conversions, and new buyers the campaign delivered.”

Sharon Liu

Marketing Manager of Nutrition, Unilever Taiwan

THE CHALLENGE

DRIVE REACH AND MEASURE SALES RESULTS FOR KNORR'S NEW COOKING SAUCES IN TAIWAN

Unilever is one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, but it isn’t complacent when it comes to growing sales. Known for its willingness to try cutting-edge advertising solutions, Unilever was keen to find a new way to advertise Knorr’s new cooking sauces in Taiwan, especially through the emerging channel – quick-commerce.

With Knorr already a trusted name in the kitchen for hundreds of millions of cooks globally, Unilever wanted to reach new potential consumers in Taiwan and drive incremental sales. The company also wanted more audience insights and to measure business results, such as conversions, rather than relying only on advertising proxy metrics. Therefore, Unilever worked with its agency, PHD, to develop a strategy that would allow it to break new ground and achieve its goals.

THE SOLUTION

ACTIVATE THE TRADE DESK'S RETAIL DATA SOLUTION IN PARTNERSHIP WITH FOODPANDA TO TARGET FOODPANDA’S CUSTOMERS AND MEASURE SALES IMPACT

The strategy involved running a display campaign on the open internet to reach its target audience. This would allow the company to connect with a broader range of potential customers. It would also help provide more transparency and control over its ad campaign than one run in ‘walled gardens’, such as some social and search platforms.

Unilever used The Trade Desk’s demand-side platform to deliver its campaign programmatically. This allowed the campaign team to draw on The Trade Desk’s marketplace of premium display inventory and ecosystem of partners.

Unilever’s strategy depended on accessing high-quality data and measuring real-world results, so it made sense to take advantage of The Trade Desk’s market-first partnership with foodpanda to leverage foodpanda’s rich retail data. As the largest food and grocery delivery platform in Asia outside of China, foodpanda serves millions of users across 11 markets via its app with a strong presence and market share in Taiwan.

The retail data and measurement solution enabled Unilever to target foodpanda’s customers and measure sales impact via The Trade Desk’s platform. The company was able to more precisely target key audiences on the open internet using transactional signals from foodpanda, including past purchasers of fresh produce, past purchasers of packaged goods, and active foodpanda subscribers. Other targeting strategies included using Unilever’s first-party data to create a lookalike audience on The Trade Desk’s platform to target consumers similar to its existing customers.

To measure the campaign’s effectiveness on sales, the company activated foodpanda’s sales measurement solution on The Trade Desk. This enabled Unilever to connect its ads to sales of Knorr products on the foodpanda app and to gain valuable insights into the impact of its ads on sales. Daily reporting of sales conversion data allowed Unilever to make informed decisions during mid-flight optimizations, such as the best audience segments to focus spending on.

THE RESULTS

GAINED 87% NEW BUYERS AND DEEP INSIGHTS WITH DATA AND MEASUREMENT SOLUTION

Unilever was the first company to leverage The Trade Desk-foodpanda partnership and the strategy paid off. Overall, the campaign achieved more than 12.9 million impressions, exceeding Unilever’s goal by more than 70%.

More importantly, The Trade Desk-foodpanda solution delivered real-world business results. These included a 229% increase in add-to-cart rates and an 81% lift in conversions on the foodpanda platform compared to the pre-campaign period. Significantly, 87% of those who bought Knorr products were new Knorr buyers.

Using foodpanda’s audience segments proved to be a more effective targeting strategy as it enabled Unilever to harness the power of retail media and engage potential customers based on foodpanda’s real purchase data, which helped deliver a lower CPA and drove the most conversions for this campaign.

The Trade Desk-foodpanda solution also revealed a wealth of other campaign insights. For example, consumers were exposed to ads an average of 8 times during the campaign, while the frequency for Knorr buyers to convert was around 9.5 times, indicating that more impressions are needed for existing buyers to convert.

Overall, Unilever’s campaign demonstrated The Trade Desk-foodpanda solution’s effectiveness in helping to reach new customers on the open internet and drive incremental sales with foodpanda’s customer segments and measurement insights. Unilever has also gained a better understanding of how its ads influence sales. These insights will enable it to better plan its campaign and work towards future-proofing its business.

Please contact The Trade Desk to see how retail data can enhance your programmatic strategy.