According to a recent study, 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.

Since we had no data on potential customers, we used Google Search data volumes to find the products and brands people wanted the most. Each country had its own collection (US, Italy, Japan, Korea). These products were used to create hundreds of unique videos.

There were 3 main innovations in this campaign.

-The use of Custom Intents, a feature that uses each user’s Google Search history to pick the b. right video programmatically.

-Limiting impressions to 1 per user. This goes against media best practices, but worked wonders in this campaign.

-Live stock data campaign management. Merchant Center is a tool used to manage banner and shopping ads. We created a custom script that linked it to the video campaign (a world’s first), removing videos automatically as products were sold.

As mentioned before, this campaign was created, served and managed by data. Without the creative combination 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 the campaign relied on an coordinated effort around the data available to each stakeholder. Data was used to choose the most relevant products for each country. YOOX un-deeplinked these hundreds of products from its website and put them on a separate data feed. This feed was integrated into the video rendering tool, which created and uploaded hundreds of individual ads directly to YOOX’s YouTube channel. The metadata from the videos was used in all the delivery/targeting tools, including search history data match for products and brands.

A tailor-made script allowed the campaign to be managed by YOOX’s live stock data. This assured us sold out products wouldn’t accidentally be shown to potential customers.

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

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

Average watch time per impression: 14.5 seconds.

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

Over 51.000.000 impressions.

19.000.000 complete views.

Non-skip rate 23% higher than global benchmarks.

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

14.7 million unique users reached.

24 years of combined watch time.

310.000 people clicked to the website.

1715 luxury items sold.

266.430,35 Euros worth of merchandise sold.

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

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

Average cost per view of just 0.02 Euros.

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

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

*Other countries were not measured.

The Most Exclusive Collection would not have been possible without an innovative use of existing data sets and tools. The campaign was created, served and managed by data. We used Google Search data to find the most desired products in each country. Targeting data (including the user’s search history via Custom Intents) allowed us serve the right video to the right person. Cookie data guaranteed ads wouldn’t be shown twice to the same person. The campaign was managed by YOOX’s live stock data via a custom script (a world’s first), removing videos automatically as products were sold.

For this idea to work, we needed to put relevant products in front of potential consumers (of whom we had no CRM data).

We analyzed Google Search data for top volume and top rising queries. The top 100 products and brands for each country became the collection, maximizing our chances to serve fashion lovers a relevant ad.

Based on skip rate benchmarks, we knew we’d need to serve a couple of impressions before they started turning into views. So, we created 5 templates that shared the same overall aesthetics. Each template was made for a specific product type, size and color. We used these data points to define profiles for targeting.

The ads were served programmatically, according to demographics, affinities (shoppers, fashionistas, bargain hunters), in-market for apparel & accessories. YOOX privileged position allowed us to add a (then beta) targeting feature, called Custom Intents. It took the user’s search history into account, delivering the right video to the right person.

Data was also used for the storytelling structure. We use ad sequencing to alternate between templates and limited impressions to 1 per use, so that no one would see the same ad twice, even if they had previously skipped it.

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.