Big-screen advertising.
Allianz Australia boosts ad performance across search, display, online and beyond with customer data and insights generated with Adobe Advertising Cloud.
30%
Lower cost
per acquisition
Objectives
Increase insights across audience segments
Engage with customers through strategic ad content
Improve reach and ad experiences
Results
Lowered cost per acquisition by 30%
Improved Primetime TV ad buying effectiveness
Enhanced cross-platform bidding
Personalised ads according to audience
“Adobe Advertising Cloud enables us to better work with our publishing partners, distribute advertisements for higher impact and strike the right tone with prospects.”
Mark Dawson
Senior Manager of Digital Optimisation, Allianz Group
Insuring every audience
From minor mishaps to major disasters, Allianz Australia helps to protect Australians with a wide range of home, life, auto, small business, travel and many other insurance products. With such a broad offering, the global insurer’s Australian subsidiary attracts a diverse community of more than three million customers locally, each with unique insurance needs.
With such a comprehensive range of insurance offerings, the company is constantly exploring new ways to reach the right customers at the moment they’re thinking about insurance. To do this, the company has adopted a test-and-learn approach to marketing. This approach yielded positive results, but also meant that search optimisation was managed through one system, online video was run through another platform and TV another.
To get the most out of its marketing investments, Allianz began considering a more unified approach using Adobe Advertising Cloud. “The integration of the platform is key for us as it helps us to understand the performance of each individual channel,” says Mark Dawson, Senior Manager, Digital Optimisation at Allianz Australia. “It also ties together how our media is performing across channels and what role each one played in terms of conversion. In the past six months we’ve seen improvements in each area because we have a more unified view.”
Using a single advertising platform also enables Allianz to make the most of its data. Allianz looks at existing customer data to help understand which publishers and platforms are prime drivers for its business. “Data is changing the way we’re thinking about advertising, audiences and creative,” says Dawson. “It’s also driving many of the conversations we have about audience engagement and how we can optimise media across TV, next-generation connected televisions and digital.”
“Adobe Advertising Cloud already uses much stronger algorithms than any other solution that we’ve seen. Adobe Sensei and artificial intelligence amplify those capabilities by expanding our view and reach, as well as automate how we allocate resources, making us that much more impactful as a team.”
Mark Dawson
Senior Manager of Digital Optimisation, Allianz Group
Starting with search
Allianz first implemented Adobe Advertising Cloud Search and immediately saw a positive impact in terms of performance improvement. “From Adobe Advertising Cloud Search alone, we’ve lowered cost per acquisition and cost per quote by up to 30%. In addition to delivering savings, we can also more clearly articulate success through better reporting.”
Within Adobe Advertising Cloud Search, Allianz uses performance optimisation, forecasting and spend recommendation capabilities, powered by Adobe Sensei. By leveraging artificial intelligence across capabilities, the company can better balance costs and budgets across multiple advertising campaigns, optimising performance according to specific business goals and KPIs, including customer acquisition, engagement, reach and more.
“Adobe Advertising Cloud Search already uses much stronger algorithms than any other solution that we’ve seen,” says Dawson. “Adobe Sensei and artificial intelligence amplify those capabilities by expanding our view and reach, as well as automate how we allocate resources, making us that much more impactful as a team.”
Allianz quickly learnt that it could use Advertising Cloud much more broadly and began testing Adobe Advertising Cloud DSP for video, display and social, as well as TV.
Innovating with OTT
Allianz Australia understands that television, as we now know it, is a more fluid and flexible experience than ever before. With smart televisions, app-enabled over-the-top (OTT) and connected devices and a growing number of digital content distributors, viewers have more choices in how they view video content. Programmes that were previously viewed exclusively on a traditional television can now be streamed via the Internet on a connected device in the sitting room, up-ending traditional television viewing experiences.
Using Adobe Advertising Cloud TV, Allianz Australia has visibility into which devices and channels are attracting its core audiences. At the highest level the insurer can see which TV broadcasters its customers are engaging with, which devices they are using and validate customer viewership data, giving Allianz confidence that it’s targeting the right audiences. This is particularly important as connected TV audiences have grown 80% year-over-year with 17% of audiences watching all of their video content via these media platforms.
“Adobe Advertising Cloud enables us to tap into the authentication layer of many distribution channels to validate our data and make sure we’re targeting the right audiences and inventories,” says Dawson. “We’ve seen that, of customers engaging with streaming content, 84% are engaging through connected devices. This is helping us to focus our advertising resources on the most-valuable distribution channels.”
The insurance company was particularly interested in what customer viewers were watching during primetime hours—6.00 p.m. to midnight—as it identified a large inventory of ad space on connected TV available during those times. Given that advertising during primetime hours is expensive, this data enables Allianz Australia to better target its advertising spend at opportunities that are likely to yield the greatest returns. Additionally, the company can build digital strategies that are complementary to television strategies to maximise reach.
“Using Adobe Advertising Cloud we can look at all of the data available, including cost per ad, reach and unique audience members across online and off-line channels and build balanced strategies,” says Dawson. “In this way, we’re really buying audiences instead of just buying time during a programme.” Dawson also noted that this approach helped the company reduce redundant ad buys, decreasing costs.
Activating insights
Allianz Australia also saw the opportunity to expand its reach by distributing its ads across multiple publishers and distributors during different times of day to reduce the chance of duplicating advertising to the same audiences. “Nobody likes it when you’re served ad after ad from the same company—it creates a poor experience and burns customers out,” says Dawson. “Adobe Advertising Cloud enables us to better work with our publishing partners, distribute advertisements for higher impact and strike the right tone with prospects.”
The company is taking this same idea one step further by enabling it to target advertisements within a programme to optimise experiences. For example, when a company shows up within an advertisement pod—a series of four advertisements within a commercial break—it doesn’t necessarily have control over which positions within the pod or the frequency with which ads are displayed. Using Adobe Advertising Cloud, Allianz Australia can better target specific spots within a pod, such as the first or fourth position, to maximise exposure to an ad. Additionally, the company can deliver multiple, staggered messages within a pod or reduce duplication within a pod to increase an audience’s exposure to the brand without burning them out.
Audience insight
In addition, using audience information—from individual demographic data up to household data—Allianz Australia can further target ad experiences according to brand goals, KPIs and audience behaviours. Using Adobe Audience Manager with Adobe Advertising Cloud, Allianz Australia can more easily identify its most profitable audience segments from search campaigns, as well as suppress audience segments that typically don’t respond to campaigns. Most importantly, the company can better target search resources at audience segments, according to specific KPIs, such as acquisition, engagement or reach goals.
“As a company that works with valuable data and with a multitude of partners, using the transparent and trusted Advertising Cloud stack of solutions allows us to easily get a complete view of where our ad dollars are going and how those ads are preforming,” says Dawson. “We’re on the journey of delivering consistent messages and brand experiences, regardless of where a customer is—be it online, TV, streaming or other channels. All of these experiences begin with our ability to view, segment and act on customer data from a single place.”