As an innovation leader, Unilever Thailand sought a solution to future-proof its audience-targeting strategy in preparation for the imminent deprecation of third-party cookies.

The company pioneered the adoption of UID2 as part of its brand campaigns for Sunlight and Vaseline. UID2 is a privacy-centric advertising industry solution that creates universal, pseudonymous identifiers for online users to replace cookies.

The objectives of the Sunlight and Vaseline campaigns were to:

• reach high-intent audiences — skincare enthusiasts for Vaseline’s new serum booster, Vaseline GlutaSmart, and homecare consumers for Sunlight’s dishwashing detergent

• enhance brand awareness and consideration using Unilever Thailand’s CRM data with UID2

• move beyond traditional audience targeting of second-party data (2PD) from publishers and cookie-based first-party data (1PD)

• demonstrate UID2 as a robust alternative to cookies for audience targeting

• validate the scalability of email and phone-number-based UID2 audience targeting with premium over-the-top (OTT) content partners in Thailand.

The execution of the Sunlight and Vaseline campaigns included integrating Unilever Thailand’s CRM data — hashed and salted email addresses and phone numbers — into the UID2 system to create unique, pseudonymous UID2 identifiers. This allowed the company to achieve greater audience targeting precision in a privacy-conscious manner. It also helped extend the campaigns’ reach across a variety of devices and channels integrated with UID2 on the open internet.

Unilever Thailand also benefitted from a significant amount of phone number data available through its preferred OTT publishers. This global-first activation demonstrated the scalability and effectiveness of phone numbers for targeting Thai consumers, who commonly use mobile numbers for subscriptions.

By using a BLS via our DSP, Unilever Thailand was able to measure brand impact (awareness, consideration, and attribution) across different strategies.

Continuous monitoring and optimization during both campaigns enabled Unilever Thailand to pivot strategies effectively, ensuring maximum engagement and impact.

Using our programmatic demand-side platform (DSP), we helped Unilever Thailand implement four different audience-targeting strategies for the Sunlight and Vaseline campaigns:

1. UID2 targeting (with CRM data) in both open advertising exchange and private marketplace settings

2. UID2 lookalike (LAL) modelling, which was implemented to prove that UID2 audience data is a high-quality seed audience that can increase the scale of targeting

3. 1PD targeting, which used traditional cookies and device IDs on the open exchange

4. 2PD targeting by OTT publishers in the private marketplace (this is Unilever Thailand’s usual method).

Media performance was compared using the following metrics:

• viewable cost per thousand (‘mille’) impressions (vCPM)

• cost per completed view (CPCV)

• cost per thousand impressions (CPM)

• video completion rate (VCR)

• video completion rate (VCR)

• viewability

• click-through rate (CTR).

In addition, a BLS was used to gauge brand impact across the four strategies.

The execution of the Sunlight and Vaseline campaigns included:

• integrating Unilever Thailand’s CRM data — hashed and salted email addresses and phone numbers — into the UID2 system to create unique, pseudonymous identifiers. This allowed the company to achieve greater targeting precision, and extend the campaigns’ reach across a variety of devices and channels integrated with UID2 on the open internet.

• integrating Unilever Thailand’s preferred OTT partners into the UID2 system. This enabled the company to use its CRM data to target relevant consumers on high-quality OTT content platforms

• using our programmatic DSP to purchase premium OTT inventory on open exchanges and private marketplaces

• measuring brand impact across the four audience-targeting strategies using a BLS via our DSP.

Unilever Thailand became the first company in Thailand to execute a UID2 campaign. It was also the first time Unilever had executed a UID2 campaign in Southeast Asia.

The global-first campaigns using UID2 (CRM) targeting outperformed other targeting strategies across multiple metrics.

Sunlight achieved:

• 37% lower CPM and 30% lower CPCV than other strategies

• 12% higher viewability and 38% lower vCPM than 1PD targeting

• 1.9x higher CTR than 2PD targeting

• a 16% increase in awareness, 11% increase in attribution, and 3% increase in consideration.

Vaseline achieved:

• 30% lower CPM and 30% lower CPCV than other strategies

• 15% higher viewability and 39% lower vCPM than 1PD targeting

• 1.2% higher VCR than 2PD targeting

• an 8% increase in awareness and 6% increase in consideration.

Targeting audience segments with mobile numbers outperformed email addresses at an average of 13.5% higher viewability and 2.5% higher VCR.

Motivated by this successful world-first activation, Unilever implemented UID2 for its 2024 campaigns in Thailand, Philippines, and Vietnam, positioning the forward-thinking company for success in the post-cookie era.