Samsung dials up its smartphone sales with custom targeting and closed-loop measurement

"Our recent advertising collaboration with The Trade Desk, GDPN and Blibli has been a landmark success, revolutionising how we approach digital marketing. This experience has reshaped our marketing strategy, prompting us to incorporate these innovative approaches in all future campaigns to reach niche markets and gain deeper insights into the consumer journey."

Felix Anindita

Performance Marketing, Samsung Indonesia

Driving online sales with better targeting and campaign insights

Samsung was looking for a way to optimise how it uses Blibli.com, a prominent Indonesian e-commerce marketplace with over 60 million visitors per month. In particular, the electronics giant wanted to drive and measure off-platform traffic from Blibli.com, which is limited to Facebook’s Collaborative Performance Advertising Solution (CPAS).

With the brand about to launch a new flagship smartphone, Samsung Indonesia wanted to execute a campaign that would cost-effectively target highly relevant audiences, such as those who were most likely to buy a new smartphone during Blibli’s anniversary — its biggest sales event of the year.

The company set a high KPI for the campaign: to triple its return on ad spend (ROAS) compared to its always-on campaign average.

Leveraging audience data and closed-loop measurement to optimise results

Samsung and its agency, Mindshare Indonesia, used our demand-side platform to run a display ad campaign on sites and apps across the open internet and Indonesia’s GDP Network (GDPN). The aim was to drive traffic to Samsung’s Blibli store.

We helped Samsung build these custom audiences based on device pricing and the release of flagship, mid-level, and entry-series phones over the past two to three years. The audiences consisted of users who were most likely to upgrade their smartphones within the typical two to three-year cycle. The ads also targeted owners of a key competitor’s flagship phone, and the team used Blibli’s first-party data of smartphone page visitors to ensure they reached in-market audiences. Samsung also targeted consumers based on demographic, interest, and behavioural data, along with GDPN and Blibli audiences.

This campaign marked two significant milestones for Samsung. With Blibli measurement solution on our platform, the Samsung team were able to measure the campaign’s impact on sales in Samsung’s Blibli e-store for the first time. This closed-loop solution connected Samsung’s open internet ads to sales outcomes on Blibli, unlocking valuable insights into the true impact of its ads on sales. Daily reporting on SKU-level sales delivered near real-time insights that Samsung was able to use to make midflight optimisations and inform future campaign decisions.

This was also the first time an electronics brand had used Blibli’s measurement solution on a programmatic demand-side platform in Indonesia for a lower-funnel campaign.

Increased ROAS with custom audiences

The campaign easily beat its KPI, delivering an 11.2x ROAS across all models in Samsung’s Blibli store. Targeting custom audiences achieved its desired impact. For example, using open exchange inventories with custom audiences resulted in 56% higher ROAS than the campaign average.

With Blibli’s retail measurement tool, Samsung was able to measure the impact of the campaign on its most important metric: sales. The campaign resulted in a 154% uplift in sales compared with Blibli’s previous mega-sale period. A second campaign to drive preorder sales of Samsung’s flagship foldable phone was also successful, resulting in a ROAS of 3.6x — demonstrating the effectiveness of The Trade Desk’s custom audiences.

Following the campaign's success, Samsung plans to apply our custom audiences strategy to all campaigns to allow them to reach niche audience segments. The company will also layer Blibli’s retail measurement solution onto its upper-funnel campaigns to give it a more complete picture of the consumer journey.

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