Our mission at aCerno is maximizing client ROI through effectively targeting users with predetermined affinities to our clients’ brands, products and services, AND providing the numbers to prove this works. To that end, we present our first public-domain case study, illustrating the uplift in a traditional online ad campaign through our new customer acquisition product, aCerno Transaction Marketplace™.

This is just the first of many we will publish, and we hope the reader will get a glimpse of the power of sophisticated data driven targeting to drive acquisition of new customers. aCerno Transaction Marketplace targets based on actual user shopping behaviors and marketing affinities, as derived through aCerno’s proprietary data and analytics.

Results

aCerno Transaction Marketplace lifted conversion rates by a factor of 7.9x versus RON (Run-Of-Network) media campaign that targeted users based on site, placement and ad-unit variables, not actual shopping behaviors or marketing affinities. aCerno Transaction Marketplace also delivered a higher number of online sales than RON online media campaigns.

In other words, if the RON campaign is running at a 1.00% conversion rate, that number should grow to 7.90% through our analytically-driven, highly-targeted campaigns.

In addition to higher conversion rates, aCerno Transaction Marketplace also delivered a higher number of online sales (2.88x higher) than the optimized RON online media campaign. This is significant, as many times total conversions decline when RON campaigns are optimized to increase conversions rates. aCerno Transaction Marketplace not only generates higher absolute conversions but it does so at very efficient conversion rates.

The acquisition of new customers is a key priority for our clients, and aCerno prides itself in delivering this cost-effectively. aCerno Transaction Marketplace campaigns target audiences that are 100% incremental to our clients' customer rosters.

  
Acquisition Targeting Approach
Conversions (Sales) Index
Conversion Rate Index
Run-of-Network – Unoptimized*
82
60
Run-of-Network – Optimized
100
100
aCerno Transaction Marketplace Campaign
288
790

*Campaign ran from Jan 12th to Jan 24th. All other campaigns ran from January 25th to February 7th.
  Notes:
The RON campaigns and aCerno Transaction Marketplace campaigns ran on two different media networks. Since the size and reach of each network were considerable, we believe the audiences reached were of the same composition.
The same creatives and offers were delivered consistently to the test and control audiences.
Impression volumes for aCerno Transaction Marketplace campaigns were significantly less than RON campaigns.

Methodology

Between January 12 and February 7, 2006, aCerno ran several online media campaigns with varying targeting strategies designed to help quantify the incremental lift generated through aCerno Transaction Marketplace new customer acquisition targeting. These campaigns were run for a mid-sized, branded online retailing client using the following approaches:
   Standard Targeting:
Run-of-Network – Untargeted media placements run across a broad range of sites, placements and ad-units.

Optimized RON – Refined RON media placements based on site, placement and ad-units that generated the highest conversion rates.

aCerno Transaction Marketplace:
aCerno Transaction Marketplace – Media targeted to specific users from aCerno’s proprietary co-operative database utilizing affinity analytics to identify users with marketing affinities to the client’s brand, products and services.

We analyzed the above campaigns with a focus on total conversions. As the Results in the table clearly indicate, the aCerno Transaction Marketplace campaign resulted in a 7.9x lift in conversion rates, as compared against Optimized RON buys.

Conclusion and Next Steps

aCerno Transaction Marketplacer campaign generated dramatically superior conversion rates relative to online media campaigns that are only optimized at the site, placement, and ad-type level. The unique nature of aCerno’s Co-Op database gives us the ability to target only those users that have an affinity for our clients’ products and services. Through targeting high-affinity users/cookies, we are able to drive incremental online sales at scale for our clients.

We hope you like what you see as we’re continually innovating ways for our clients to reach consumers cost-effectively through marketing affinities. To get started with maximizing your own ROI the aCerno way, or to learn more about our offerings, please contact:
info@acerno.com.

Background

The majority of online graphical advertisements are purchased based on three primary types of targeting methodologies:

Inferred demographics of a particular publisher site (e.g. age & gender)
Context/content of specific pages (e.g. auto, sports, business)
Size and functionality of the actual ad-unit (e.g. 728x90, rich media)

Typically, these online media plans are then optimized by tracking conversions and redistributing impressions against the variables (publisher site, placement, ad-unit) that exhibit the highest conversion rates.

aCerno believes this is an extremely inefficient advertising model and has solved this dilemma by allowing marketers to identify and target only those users that posses strong, predetermined, affinities with an advertiser’s own products and/or services. Our “Affinity Marketing” campaigns target high-response users identified from the tens-of-millions of recent shopping and purchase behaviors contained in aCerno’s online Co-Op database.*

Through robust analytics and rigorous testing, large pools of “affinity cookies” are identified and targeted with online media campaigns specifically designed to drive sales for participating advertisers – regardless of site demographics, page context or ad unit size and functionality. Our clients only pay for actual conversions.

This case study was developed to show the incremental lift of aCerno’s Affinity Marketing relative to the traditional optimized media campaigns noted above.

*This data is provided from major online e-commerce and retailers in return for the rights to run aCerno Transaction Marketplace campaigns. This information is collected at the “cookie” level in adherence to all NAI privacy standards and does not contain any Personally Identifiable Information (PII).