Skoda case study - IE 2022 Model Launch

How Skoda, one of the world’s most innovative car manufacturers, utilised a combination of high-impact creative and attention optimisation to drive awareness of its 2022 model range.

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The Brief

Skoda’s usual optimisation approach for digital display campaigns relied on Viewability, but the car manufacturer was aware that such approach wasn’t focused on optimising towards effectiveness. For the launch of their 2022 model range, they were interested in finding a measurement and optimisation solution that was based on how their audience was responding to the ads; a solution that could offer more granular insights and more effective optimisation opportunities towards brand outcomes.

The Solution

Playground xyz worked with Skoda to construct a strategy based on two key aspects: high-impact, attention-grabbing creative and innovative attention measurement and optimisation.

HangTime + Creative Attention Tracking‍

To maximise impact across mobile devices, Playground’s creative technologists constructed a bespoke creative unit using our most attention-grabbing High Impact format: HangTime.

Utilising the high-quality assets supplied by Skodia to their fullest potential, this highly-engaging creative unit worked to maximise consumer Attention Time, in turn ensuring uplift in other campaign KPIs and brand outcome goals.

The campaign also made use of our innovative Creative Attention Tracking (CAT) product. CAT identifies and visualises which specific creative elements are converting the consumers’ attention into engagement in real-time, allowing for creative optimisations to be made in-flight.

Attention Optimised Contexts (AOC)

Attention Time - how long in seconds a consumer looked at the ad - was recorded across every single impression served, with Playground’s Attention Optimised Contexts (AOC) product employed to optimise campaign delivery.

As the campaign began delivery across pre-determined broad contextual categories, the Attention Time being secured by each impression across each category, sub-category and page was measured. As AOC learnt exactly where the most attentive audiences were, it automatically optimised delivery to those areas.

The Results

Within a short space of time, AOC was able to identify the contextual categories securing the highest levels of Attention Time for the Skoda ad, quickly highlighting clear, actionable trends where certain categories were over or under-indexing against the mean average.

Among the top-performing categories were Science, Technology & Computing, Sports and Travel, with Personal Finance and Style & Fashion under-performing. Interestingly, and likely in contrast to what automotive brands may expect to see, both News and Business under-indexed for attention - an optimisation opportunity that may have been missed with a more standard contextual targeting approach.

Looking at the sub-categories built an even more nuanced picture. As with the main categories, certain Sports, Technology and Science sub-categories performed well, however ‘Arts & Entertainment/Video Game Genres’ over-indexed for Attention Time despite the broader ‘Arts & Entertainment’ category under-performing. This highlights attention signals’ ability to validate contextual performance down to a fine level, ensuring opportunities for efficient campaign optimisation aren’t missed.

The combination of attention-grabbing creative and next-generation optimisation led to incredible results for Skoda. The campaign achieved an average Attention Time of 3.61s for a total of 2998 Achieved Hours of Attention. Against only 815 Estimated Hours of Attention achieved by a non-optimised 300 x 250 control unit*, that’s over 90 additional days worth of attention!

Aside from a huge boost to overall attention and significant uplift to other KPIs such as CTR and Viewability, the most exciting results for Skoda were to the overall outcomes, of which Awareness and Recall were the most valued.

Awareness: 154% uplift
Recall: 388% uplift

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