Evaluating the Impact of Upper-Funnel Campaigns

A large American manufacturer sells products to consumers through branch locations nationwide. To drive leads and conversions, this manufacturer’s branches used a blend of upper-, mid- and lower-funnel tactics to reach customers throughout their nonlinear journeys. But the downside was the branches lacked analytics that proved these top-of-funnel programmatic campaigns had any bearing on the next customer journey phase. Without this info, the branches couldn’t have full insight into how digital media channels affected their campaigns.

This manufacturer turned to its agency, Strategic America, and, in turn, Strategic America’s programmatic media execution partner, Goodway, for support. Goodway worked together with TTD to implement Inferred Brand Intent (IBI) pixels, a type of beta test that tracks when users are served a programmatic ad (display, video, CTV, etc.) and then visit web pages containing certain keywords. TTD created pixels for the programmatic campaigns. Using a keyword list segmented into three categories, Goodway ran a 90-day test.

Goodway’s original hypothesis proved correct — by adding IBI pixels to the branches’ campaigns, the manufacturer could finally see what upper-funnel tactics effectively drove its brand and product searches. 90 days after installing the IBI pixels, viewers who saw programmatic ads (display, video and CTV) and then completed a brand-related search had a 0.001% conversion rate — more than 1.5x higher than the branch appointment conversion rate. (Its products involve large investments ranging from $4K – $16K+, so conversions are lower than lower-priced products.)