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.

To achieve that, we had to make sure we could:

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 allowed live stock data to manage the 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.

Over 51.000.000 impressions.

14.7 million unique users reached.

19.000.000 complete views.

Non-skip rate 23% higher than global benchmarks.

Average watch time per impression: 14.5 seconds.

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% 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.

Since we had no data on potential customers, we used Google Search data to find the most desired products and brands in each market. YOOX added language, brand, product type, color, size and price to the list. Each product became a unique video to be served programmatically.

Consumers were targeted by demographics (men-women/25-54), affinities (shoppers, fashionistas, bargain hunters), in-market for apparel & accessories. For relevance and precision, we added Custom Intents, which uses the user’s search history to deliver the right video to the right person.

YouTube was the only platform for the global scale and reach of this campaign. Due to YOOX privileged position, we were whitelisted to use the (then beta) format TrueView for Action, which combines the features of normal skippable pre-roll ads with the benefits of a customizable call-to-action button.

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.