Objectives

Bank Norwegian wanted to extend its performance marketing activities and test Verizon Media’s native platform to explore if they could scale up user acquisition and drive additional low priced conversions for their refinancing product. Bank Norwegian had a strict cost per acquisition target for both their credit card and bank loan product so for Verizon Media’s native platform to become a part of their marketing mix, the platform needed to deliver sub-target CPAs.

 

Insights

Bank Norwegian and its agency partner, NoA Connect, had a very clear cost per acquisition target for both their loan and credit card products and they knew who their core demographic target group was. The task was to figure out how to build high converting audiences based on the obvious demographics but also dive deeper into how they could leverage algorithm optimization and first-party Verizon Media data to find the high converters.

 

Finding high converters

Bank Norwegian had no previous experience with Verizon Media’s programmatic native platform, so we identified a number of targeting and algorithm-based optimization strategies we knew would perform well for their vertical.

We decided to test three different campaign strategies:

1. Broad targeting, using second price auction CPC bidding, optimizing towards the best performing placements and devices.
2. E-mail and search intent signals were used to build custom first-party segments containing users who were in-market for either a new credit card or for taking up a bank loan.
3. Based on converted users, tracked by the platform pixel, we used the Predictive Segment model of the platform. The Predictive Segment feature is a dynamic algorithmic model that finds and targets users with a high probability of converting.

 

Business outcomes

The campaigns have over time delivered more than 365M impressions and 1.1M clicks across several markets. All three campaigns proved efficient over time through varied levels of optimization. This resulted in Bank Norwegian deciding to implement the Verizon Media native platform as a regular part of their marketing mix. Of the campaigns strategies above, the most significant results were driven by strategies number:

• 2. The email and search intent first-party Verizon segments delivered 24% lower CPA and 75% higher conversion rate compared to the broadly targeted campaign (#1).
• 3. The campaign using the Predictive Segment algorithm feature delivered an impressive 46% lower CPA and a massive 475% higher conversion rate compared to the broadly targeted campaign (#1). 

 

 

Comment From Bank Norwegian

“Verizon Media’s native platform has exceeded our expectations on both performance and scale. Verizon Media offers a first in class platform service and they have helped us build a proprietary optimization system that has increased our performance drastically.  We see them as an important partner when it comes to performance marketing across all our markets” Julie Jacobsen, Marketing Manager, Bank Norwegian

 

Conclusion

Bank Norwegian found that Verizon Media’s native marketplace was able to exceed their expectations on both performance and scale and decided to implement the channel as part of the marketing mix. Bank Norwegian also found that split testing multiple first-party and algorithm-based segments enabled them to lower the CPA and increase conversion rates drastically. Another interesting finding was how experimenting with native ad copy and image, enabled Bank Norwegian to increase their CTRs and improve overall performance across all campaigns.