According to a recent research, 76% of people skip ads as an ingrained habit.

To change this habit and give past collections their rightful value, we created The Most Exclusive Collection. We removed the most desired items from YOOX.com and made them available only through skippable pre-roll ads. The catch? You had just one shot at getting each product. Skip the ad and you can kiss that item goodbye. Forever.

To achieve that, the media campaign should:

a. Offer new customers products they actually wanted (though we had no data on them).

b. Create hundreds of videos, each with a different product.

c. Deliver the right video to the right person programmatically on a global scale.

d. Guarantee the same ad would not be served twice to the same person.

e. Manage the campaign in real time, so sold out products weren’t shown accidentally.

The implementation of the campaign relied on an coordinated effort around the data available to each stakeholder. Google data was used to choose the most relevant products for each country. YOOX un-deeplinked the selected products from its website and put them on a separate data feed.

Our proprietary video rendering platform generated, tagged and uploaded the hundreds of individual videos directly to YOOX’s YouTube channel overnight.

Placements were defined programmatically, using all available tools, including search history match (Custom Intents). A custom script was created to allow live stock data to manage the video campaign (a world’s first), removing videos as products were sold.

The Most Exclusive Collection had almost 400 individual ads, in 4 different languages. The ads were seen by millions of people globally and generated hundreds of thousands Euros in sales.

The Most Exclusive Collection was created, served and managed by data. Without a creative use of the data available, we would have ended up with a handful of videos being (over)served to all users within the demographics. The chosen mechanics allowed us to serve personal, relevant ads around the world at scale.

The implementation of data was a coordinated effort between all stakeholders. The data around the most relevant products was used by YOOX to un-deeplink the respective items from its website and put them on a separate data feed.

This feed was integrated into our video rendering tool, which created and uploaded hundreds of individual ads directly to YOOX’s YouTube channel.

The metadata was used in the media planning to deliver the ads programmatically. We even used the user’s search history (a tool called Custom Intents) to deliver the right video to the right person.

Over 51.000.000 impressions.

19.000.000 complete views.

Non-skip rate 23% higher than global benchmarks.

Average watch time: 14.5 seconds.

24 years of combined watch time.

14.7 million unique users reached.

310.000 people clicked to the website.

1715 luxury items sold.

266.430,35 Euros worth of merchandise sold.

Impressions above target: 18% Italy, 22% Japan, 40% Korea.*

Views above target: 42% Italy, 23% Japan, 13% Korea, 12.5% US.

The campaign was so effective, it was limited by daily budget every day.

Average cost per view of just 0.02 Euros.

CPV below target: -35% Italy, -21% Japan, -17% Korea, -12% US.

Ad recall lift: 32.3% Italy, 17.2% US.*

Purchase intent lift: 17.2% Italy, 13.4% Japan, 8.4% Korea.*

Brand interest lift: 97% US, 71% Japan.*

*Other countries were not measured.

At its core, The Most Exclusive Collection is a creative use of existing media formats and tools, combined with effective media planning. Without it, we would not have been able to present the brand message to such a large audience, nor generate sales among the most engaged viewers.

Programmatic delivery and impression caps, for example, are features available to any advertiser. Using them in tandem, however, helped us change behaviours and achieve best-in-class results for a digital video campaign: reduced skip rates, increased watch time and lots of clicks.

Customers were targeted by demographics (men-women/25-54), affinities (shoppers, fashionistas, bargain hunters), in-market for apparel & accessories. YOOX privileged position allowed us to use a (then beta) targeting feature, called Custom Intents. It takes the user’s search history into account, delivering the right video to the right person.

Ads were served programmatically over TrueView for Action, a skippable pre-roll ad designed to generate response. The films were designed to capture attention from the very first second and to increase the sense of urgency around the items presented.

The resulting mechanics gamified the user experience, transforming a media format into a new e-commerce tool.

YOOX is the world’s leading lifestyle online store for fashion and design. YOOX believes that fashion is timeless and that past collections have value. YOOX isn’t famous for discounts.

We needed to introduce the brand and its values to fashion lovers around the world, making them value past collections as much as YOOX does.

Objectives:

- Reach new customers in the 4 key markets: US, Italy, Japan, Korea.

- Increase brand awareness and interest.

- Differentiate YOOX from other online fashion stores.

- Test YouTube as a direct sales channel.