CHEERIOS® sees “O‑so-delicious” campaign success with retail data

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE

Exploring the effectiveness of retail data to create highly targeted campaigns 

Nestlé CHEERIOS^® brings bowls of joy to the breakfast table for millions of families across the U.K. To remain one of the nation’s favourite cereal brands, Nestlé was keen to explore new ways to maximise its full-funnel ad campaigns. So, when its agency, EssenceMediacom, and The Trade Desk pitched the benefits of using retail data to reach a more relevant audience and measure sales, Nestlé put it to the test. 

SOLUTION

Comparing retail data audiences with custom affinity audiences 

The brand wanted to use its display campaign to compare the difference between custom affinity segments and audiences created using data from multiple retailers. 

While custom affinity audiences allow advertisers to target consumers based on their specific interests and online behaviour — using factors such as keywords, URLs, apps, and places that their ideal customers interact with — retail data is even more granular and expansive, capturing highly relevant consumer behaviours. When activated on our Kokai platform experience, it enabled the brand to identify audiences who had viewed or purchased its products at least once, who showed intent to purchase, and who bought products in the same category. 

The brand used data from multiple retailers to build highly targeted, cereal-loving audience segments, then used this same data to track and measure sales made in store or online as a result of its campaign. It also conducted a brand lift study to better understand the correlation between its upper-funnel branding activities on these direct sales. 

RESULTS

Proving that retail data sends brand preference and cereal sales soaring

Crunch time: Nestlé found that retail data audience targeting was far more effective than custom affinity segments at reaching its most valuable consumers — and driving sales. 

This test proved that retail data audiences generated a significant boost in consideration and purchase intent — the brand lift study revealed a 5‑point increase in brand preference versus benchmarks. More importantly, this helped to drive 88% more conversions (sales) overall than custom affinity segments. And in terms of cost per acquisition (CPA), the retail data CPA was almost 7x better than the custom affinity CPA. 

Having proved the value of retail data to drive brand lift performance and sales, Nestlé plans to activate it across most of their future campaigns — including audio and additional channels — to boost audience reach and engage customers with more relevant messaging. 

Discover how you can leverage retail data across the full funnel to help drive unique reach and conversions. Contact us or reach out to your account manager at The Trade Desk today.