Evaluating the Impact of Upper-Funnel Campaigns

Goodway worked with The Trade Desk (TTD) and Strategic America, a marketing agency, to help a major U.S. manufacturer see how programmatic campaigns impact lower-funnel results.

A woman and a man talking to a saleswoman with a tablet.

Challenges

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.

Strategy

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.

Results

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.)

Goodway and TTD helped us uncover critically valuable data that gave us insight into how much impact upper-funnel programmatic campaigns have on our manufacturing client’s conversions.

Carolyn Hikiji, Digital Media DirectorStrategic America

Key Outcomes

Goodway found that IBI pixels provide a more comprehensive view of audience behavior across the purchase funnel. IBI pixels measure valuable search behaviors and help bridge the gap between awareness and lead generation. Users who saw the manufacturer’s programmatic campaigns (including display, video and CTV) after 90 days engaged in 10,880 visits to pages about related products in the manufacturer’s brand category.

Overall, the manufacturer got that proof programmatic display, video and CTV campaigns do drive consumers to further research relevant products, make competitor comparisons and, most importantly, seek out its products.