Dell owes much of its success to relentless improvement of its direct-to-consumer model via its online retail platform, Dell.com. But even huge brands with rock-solid site performance need to innovate to stay ahead.
At Dell.com today, visitors can build highly customized computers, tablets, and other devices based on their needs and budget. Dell previously employed a solution using this data to generate ad creative that would retarget site visitors. Yet this ad-serving tech was not serving Dell or shoppers effectively. To overcome a misalignment between personalization strategy and media targeting, Dell sought an improved content optimization solution and chose Choreograph for a pilot program.
The Challenge: From Site Visits to Sales
When consumers visit Dell.com without making a purchase, it’s a missed opportunity. Data from those visits has been used by Dell for retargeting, but the previous managed service was not able to effectively deliver customized creative to individual customers.
The service couldn’t respond dynamically to consumers’ unique needs and place targeted ads that would entice revists and completed shopping carts. Dell needed closer alignment between their demand-side platform (DSP) and dynamic creative optimization (DCO) platform.
Our Approach: A Higher-Performing DCO Platform
Dell has an existing ad serving platform, one that used e-commerce and product fulfillment data to craft a unique experience. As visitors navigate through the site, data is captured that helps retarget customers with personalized creative messages. Yet the previous solution did not have the alignment between creative and Google audiences needed to truly target the right profiles. It also lacked the transparency and scalability needed to optimize campaigns and make them perform to expectations, and did not offer continuous testing to further improve results.
Choreograph created a benchmark test that pit the old, ineffective solution against a more robust, strategic delivery of creative optimization to increase revenue.
In the initial pilot project, the dedicated Choreograph team worked closely with Dell to analyze existing intelligence, establish baselines for performance, develop data gathering requirements, locate those data sources from third parties, and execute a plan to re-target consumers. The solution would improve targeting efficiency while maintaining strict compliance with privacy regulations and best practices.
Create supports feed-based dynamic display ads with creative decisioning aligned to the user’s website browser — the ability to associate types of products, product images, and supporting ad copy with consumer profiles. With this approach, each audience received a more relevant creative, one that was then tested against a default creative. The Choreograph algorithm and the self-service model allowed for faster turns and a detailed testing roadmap. Dell ad serving strategies were better aligned to media signals and enhanced product serving capabilities.
Instead of a generic laptop ad, users received creative messages that mirrored content from their last page visited or the contents of an abandoned cart. Create used privacy-compliant consumer data gathered from the Dell.com site to determine which products were viewed the most, and then used the images and copy of top performing product ads in new creative for retargeting. Because this data is near-real time, it is immediately put to use to target customers.
The same retargeting creative was then presented as new ads to consumers who didn’t initially interact with the individual products. This creative out-performed the default creative, resulting in higher response rates and revenue.
Results: More Visitors Return to Complete Carts
The pilot showed that our DCO model, approach to partnership and transparency, and closed-loop testing and strategy could increase revenue.
During the pilot campaign, shoppers who’d visited Dell.com without making a purchase were targeted with ads that contained messaging related to products they’d viewed onsite. These ads were presented on ad servers and third-party websites. Mid-campaign adjustments to creative assets made for a constant feedback loop between presentation, performance, and analysis.
uplift in revenue
million in potential revenue
million unique creatives generated
During the first phase of the engagement, Dell migrated 20 campaigns in 11 markets in 7 languages, encompassing 130 decision-tree rules and resulting in more than 3.5 million unique creative versions. The previous DCO solution utilized a $20m media budget investment to drive $168m in revenue for Dell, while the Choreograph Create pilot campaign drove a 54% revenue uplift and could result in $16.8m incremental revenue, assuming a full migration.
This success was just the beginning. Increased understanding of behaviors and effectiveness, coupled with the self-service operating model, allowed Dell to quickly test and iterate. Data-driven personalization at scale and cross-team collaboration with WPP agencies like VML and EssenceMediacom enabled our DCO technology to achieve a 400% revenue increase for Dell.
The increased potential revenue and the efficient generation of unique creative — virtually impossible to achieve manually — validated the approach and encouraged Dell to initiate more successful migrations.
