Men’s Wearhouse proves the power of digital audio, boosting in-store sales by 16% 

BUSINESS OBJECTIVE 

Testing the potential of digital audio for driving offline sales

Men’s Wearhouse, a leading retailer of men’s suits and formal wear in the U.S., saw a clear opportunity to expand beyond its traditional customer base and reach a growing segment of trend‑forward men. The brand identified this audience as style‑conscious shoppers, newly engaged men, and professionals looking to upgrade their wardrobes. In‑store purchases drive roughly 95% of the brand’s total sales, so Men’s Wearhouse needed a modern way to connect with these audiences and bring them into stores.

With its media and measurement partner, Ovative Group, Men’s Wearhouse identified digital audio as an underutilized channel with strong potential to reach these high‑value shoppers. But like many retailers with predominantly offline sales, the team faced a familiar challenge: Standard measurement methods made it difficult to tie digital audio exposure directly to in‑store conversions. 

To solve this, the team partnered with The Trade Desk to build a performance‑driven audio strategy. Using the Kokai platform, the team activated first‑party seed audiences to uncover new, fashion‑minded prospects and scale, all while accurately measuring how digital audio influenced in‑store purchases. 

SOLUTION 

Optimizing performance with in-store attribution

To assess the potential of audio for engaging new audiences, Men’s Wearhouse and Ovative used our demand-side platform (DSP) to run a programmatic campaign across various digital audio platforms, including Pandora.

To validate digital audio as a performance-driving channel, Men’s Wearhouse needed a way to measure audio’s impact on in-store sales during the campaign flight. To enable in-store attribution, the team used offline conversions API (CAPI) within Kokai to directly connect digital ad impressions with in-store sales data. 

With Koa, our platform’s AI, the team optimized the campaign toward offline sales performance, enabling more efficient bidding decisions to help drive in-store purchases. 

RESULTS 

Driving reach, efficiency, and in-store sales

The three-month campaign delivered strong, measurable results, including improved reach, sales, and efficiency. For instance, 48% of households reached by digital audio were not reached by other channels. 

Most importantly, the offline measurement solution, CAPI, showed the campaign delivered a 16% increase of in-store sales from audiences exposed to audio. In addition, Ovative’s proprietary marketing mix modeling (MMM) tool, EMRge^TM Modern MMM+, was used to further evaluate performance, revealing an 8% higher media return than the campaign average. 

Overall, the campaign successfully highlights that with clear online-offline attribution, digital audio, executed programmatically, can be a performance-driving channel, cost-effectively reaching new customers, and lifting in-store sales. As a result of this success, Men’s Wearhouse is increasing its investment in digital audio advertising and integrating it more permanently into its marketing strategy. 

Want to learn how adding digital audio to your strategy can increase reach and sales? Contact us or reach out to your account manager at The Trade Desk today.