Media agency Together breaks through with decisioned media buying on Kokai

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE 

Putting decisioned BVOD media buying to the test 

Media agency Together has been a force of positive progress for businesses across New Zealand since 2018. When a leading insurance brand approached the agency to help improve the performance of its broadcast video-on-demand (BVOD) campaigns, it took a bold approach. 

In a BVOD market where a few players dominate and pre-negotiated, guaranteed media buying is the norm, Together set out to test whether decisioned BVOD media buying — where ads are bought in real time based on data — could outperform the traditional approach, especially in driving conversions and improving ad quality. 

Together and its client turned to The Trade Desk to help test whether this data-driven approach, alongside buying high-quality inventory through our premium marketplaces, could outperform traditional programmatic guaranteed (PG) deals. 

SOLUTION 

Evaluating performance and cost-effectiveness of decisioned vs. PG 

Together designed a test campaign that directly compared decisioned BVOD media buying to PG deals. The decisioned approach was activated on our AI-powered media buying platform experience, Kokai, using BVOD inventory from private marketplaces (PMPs) and our Sellers and Publishers 500+ marketplace. To directly compare performance, the PMP and PG deals were run across the same two publishers, which represent a majority of the key BVOD players in the New Zealand market. 

The client was keen to measure real business outcomes, cost-effectiveness, and inventory quality across each campaign. Together placed a universal pixel on the brand’s website to capture conversion data, allowing for an accurate comparison of the key campaign metric — cost per acquisition (CPA). 

The agency also used our TV Quality Index (TVQI) to measure the quality of ad placements and viewer engagement. TVQI was a key measurement component to this campaign, as it helped validate the quality of the Sellers and Publishers 500+ and PMP deal inventory — buying methods that are used less by advertisers who buy BVOD inventory in New Zealand. 

RESULTS 

Delivering high-quality impressions and better performance 

Together’s test showed that decisioned BVOD media outperforms PG across the board, delivering better-quality ad placements, more conversions, and greater cost-efficiencies. The decisioned campaign delivered a TVQI score of 78 (11% above our platform benchmark), which was 7% and 15% higher than the two publisher PG campaigns. These findings help prove that advertisers can diversify their buying strategies beyond PG to access high-quality inventory. 

Decisioned media gives our platform the ability to select which impressions to buy based on a campaign’s targeting and performance goals. This offers greater choice and control compared to the fixed nature of PG, where we must buy almost every impression opportunity we receive. This led to the PMPs and Sellers and Publishers 500+ delivering 11 times more conversions than one of the publisher PG campaigns, and two times more conversions than the other. These conversions were also delivered with cost-efficiencies, achieving an 88% lower CPA than PG buying. 

These results prove the effectiveness of decisioned BVOD media on our Kokai platform and have set the standard for future BVOD campaigns in NZ. 

Discover how using Kokai to buy high-quality inventory from our premium marketplaces can help boost performance. Contact us or reach out to your account manager at The Trade Desk today.