General Mills serves up sales and efficiency gains using retail data, achieves 5.5x uplift in sales

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE 

Demonstrating the value of retail data-led targeting for business impact 

General Mills is known for its popular food brands, including Häagen-Dazs, Old El Paso, and Betty Crocker. The company set out to reach the right consumers and more accurately measure performance. 

To achieve these objectives, General Mills collaborated with its agency, Universal McCann, and The Trade Desk to develop a retail data-focused strategy for its Nature Valley brand in the U.K. Ultimately, this approach aimed to demonstrate how pairing retail data with real-time optimisations could unlock measurable business impact, including increased sales and improved return on ad spend (ROAS). 

SOLUTION 

Activating a multi-retailer strategy to enhance reach, sales, and ROAS 

General Mills and Universal McCann leveraged The Trade Desk platform to access our marketplace of retail data partners, enabling the use of purchasing data from multiple retailer media partners, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and online grocer Ocado. Transaction data from stores, apps, and websites was used within the brand’s online video (OLV) campaign. 

This multi-retailer approach allowed the team to reach new audiences. Using retail data, the media buying team built relevant audience segments targeting high-value consumers including: 

• Active and lapsed Nature Valley shoppers 

• Competitor brand shoppers 

• High-propensity buyers 

• Healthy eaters 

• Cereal shoppers at specific grocers 

Additionally, working with Sainsbury’s and Ocado enabled the brand to directly link exposure to its ads to business outcomes by tracking sales and ROAS. This closed-loop measurement approach helped General Mills quantify the incremental impact of its media investment. The availability of this real-time retail signal enabled the team to refine its targeting and media delivery in-flight to optimise campaign performance. 

Using our platform’s advanced capabilities, including Koa optimisation, predictive clearing, and the Identity Alliance’s cross-device targeting, the team was able to optimise campaign delivery, scaling its activation while maintaining relevance and improving performance. 

RESULTS 

Improving efficiency and impact across the sales funnel 

The media buying team’s retail data activation strategy delivered strong results across efficiency, effectiveness, and impact. Over the four-month flight period, the award-winning campaign generated an impressive 5.5x uplift in attributed sales. This result was driven by continuous learning from retail signals and in-flight campaign optimisation, allowing the brand to enhance performance throughout the campaign and drive stronger sales outcomes. 

The campaign also reached more than 3 million people, delivering incremental reach by engaging high-value retail audiences that traditional targeting would have been less likely to capture. 

Our partnerships with Ocado and Sainsbury’s helped General Mills to better understand the business impact of its campaign. Using retail data, the ROAS improved throughout the duration of the campaign, ultimately achieving £1.50 for every pound spent, on average, a 2x improvement compared to when retail data wasn’t leveraged.