“Leveraging multiple data sources with Adobe Advertising Cloud enables us to get super granular with who we can target and retarget across screens during a campaign. It’s one of the key factors for driving conversion—including online purchases and web visits.”

Francesca Parodi
Vice President Americas Marketing, Dell

Dell is everywhere

From consumers to organisations of all sizes, Dell provides a broad end-user portfolio of award-winning products. Dell’s Consumer segment aims to build consideration among key audiences by showcasing its innovative solutions. For Dell’s Connected TV campaign, Dell was focused on building awareness around Dell Cinema, which delivers a more immersive cinematic experience through Cinema Colour, Cinema Sound and Cinema Streaming.

With a brand as ubiquitous as Dell, the challenge is finding engaging ways to keep Dell at the forefront of customers’ minds—across every screen. Linear TV has long been an important vehicle to deliver Dell’s message in a compelling way against a massive audience. However, as consumer behaviour is changing and people are cutting the cable, the company understands the importance of finding new ways to market to these segments.

Connected TV (CTV), an Internet-connected device that streams content to TV sets via apps, is one of the ways Dell is adapting its media strategy. Connected TV reaches audiences with the same lean-back, immersive experience as TV, while allowing the company to more precisely target, control and measure its media spend.

Dell identified the opportunity to leverage the Adobe Advertising Cloud TV solution within Adobe Experience Cloud to gain access to unique inventory and audiences, track and measure CTV advertising, optimise campaigns according to various KPIs and retarget audience segments according to behaviours—all while in-flight. 

Targeting audiences

Dell employed behavioural targeting to go beyond age and gender demos used in traditional linear TV to leverage their first-party CRM data and DMP audience segments to more precisely reach key audiences. Those digital IDs and attributes were matched to CTV households and Adobe Advertising Cloud then delivered targeted ads across CTV apps.

Additionally, Dell retargeted users who had previously been exposed to the Dell digital campaign, increasing engagement across screens. “Leveraging multiple data sources with Adobe Advertising Cloud enables us to get super granular with who we can target and retarget across screens during a campaign,” says Francesca Parodi, Vice President Americas Marketing, Dell. “It’s one of the key factors for driving conversion—including online purchases and web visits.”

Adobe Advertising Cloud over-delivered on impression goals and added an incremental 2.2% unduplicated reach against audiences not exposed to either of the company’s traditional TV or digital campaigns. 

“Adobe Advertising Cloud provides oversight for several aspects of a CTV campaign at once, making sure we’re delivering engaging videos, measuring reach and frequency and helping to ensure a customer is getting the best experience.”

Francesca Parodi
Vice President Americas Marketing, Dell

Optimising campaigns

Real-time measurement has historically been challenging within the TV space. Through advanced measurement solutions from Adobe, Dell generated ongoing reporting throughout the campaign in order to make smart optimisations while in flight.

“Traditional television advertising is a key part of our marketing mix, but it can be difficult to pivot during a campaign and the purchase model can be rigid,” says Parodi. “This has pushed us to look at Connected TV experiences as a clear opportunity to use video to effectively engage with customers, as well as optimise in-flight.”

For example, when a viewer was served an ad on CTV, Adobe Advertising Cloud matched exposure data to households to look at individual publisher frequency, which has been an ongoing pain point in the CTV space. This capability was unavailable through traditional TV ad-buying or other demand side platforms, which allowed Dell to optimise publisher spend and drive a more consistent overall frequency for the first time.

By controlling frequency levels, budget could be reallocated to networks that showed higher levels of unique audiences, allowing Dell to maximise reach and help ensure a positive customer experience by avoiding ad fatigue. “Adobe Advertising Cloud provides oversight for several aspects of a CTV campaign at once, making sure we’re delivering engaging videos, measuring reach and frequency and helping to ensure a customer is getting the best experience,” says Parodi. 

Measuring success

From the outset, Dell outlined key business objectives for its CTV campaigns with Adobe. While the primary KPI was to increase consideration and purchase intent, brand surveys have long lead times and it can be challenging to understand the immediate impact on sales.

To gather insights and measure success against KPIs, Dell worked with the Adobe Advertising Cloud Advanced Measurement Services team. By weaving best practices into strategies and meeting with Adobe consultants on a consistent basis, stakeholders were able to make real-time optimisations to deliver the best results.

With Adobe Advertising Cloud, Dell monitors the impact of the campaign to see positive impact on short-term conversions, including site visits and purchases. Conversion rates trended up, suggesting that similar to linear, it does still take time for people to take action after seeing an ad on CTV. Dell also found that users exposed to both the CTV and digital campaign drove significantly higher conversions.

Overall, cross-channel measurement capabilities within Adobe Advertising Cloud enabled Dell to get a deeper understanding of its media impact. The company now has richer visibility into reach by screen, impact of creative, optimal frequencies for engaging customers, unique visitors and how different combinations of experiences across screens translate into business results.

“Adobe Advertising Cloud is very important to what we can achieve through CTV and Advanced Measurement Services provides critical direction behind how we can refine what we’re doing,” says Parodi . “We’re collecting insights regularly that are helping us to improve performance and identify how to reach our audience more effectively. The Adobe team is also providing best practices that enhance our buying strategy so we can get the most from every new investment before or after a campaign has launched.”

Accelerating forward

After partnering with Adobe and using Adobe Advertising Cloud for the initial Consumer CTV campaign, Dell expanded its partnership with Adobe including targeting more niche small business and gaming segments.

“With Adobe Advertising Cloud, we can overlay a wide range of audience segment data into CTV campaigns, enabling us to be very strategic with who we engage,” says Parodi. “Knowing that we can use a mix of guaranteed and non-guaranteed buys and make adjustments in the middle of the campaign gives us the flexibility to optimise as we go.”