As with each new year, there is a spirit of optimism in the air as marketers around the world make their personal resolutions and professional plans for success in 2022. There will undoubtedly be many exciting innovations to test this year--cookie-less measurement solutions, expansion of social commerce channels, etc.--of which marketers should take note.
Though it's important to keep an eye toward the future, it's equally crucial to learn from the past and expand upon strategies that have already proven successful.
We believe 2021 will be remembered as the year in which Social Display firmly solidified itself as a meaningful creative category. It will certainly still be a new, innovative concept for some brands who have yet to test the unique creative units (and now would be the perfect time to introduce the opportunity).
But as thousands of brands have learned over the past few years, running social media experiences within display environments has proven to be an incredibly cost-effective way to reduce creative production burdens while also delivering superior performance compared to traditional display ads. Social Display can now be considered an award-winning approach, as AdExchanger crowned it the Best Overall Use of Programmatic in a Marketing Campaign for 2021.
Adtaxi, a Denver-based digital marketing agency, led the acclaimed campaign on behalf of its client cbdMD. When the pandemic hit, cbdMD, like most businesses, had to pivot from brick and mortar retail to focus on e-commerce as the primary driving force of revenue. The company turned to Adtaxi to build awareness and drive meaningful online sales. The goal was to scale traffic to the website and subsequent revenue while maintaining the same ROAS efficiency.
Adtaxi delivered a two-tiered solution. First, it established a way to measure prospecting by building a custom dashboard based on first or any-touch basis.
Next, it optimized its creative strategy by conducting a test of standard display banners and Social Display ads. Running both ad types at the same time, Adtaxi tested to see which would perform better.
The agency saw significant differences between the two ad types.
"What we found is the click through rate for Social Display in the campaign was 3x standard display. Our cost per acquisition was 50%, or half of what it is in standard display, meaning our ROAS was 2x," explained Andrew Ransom, Team Lead for Programmatic Operations at Adtaxi.
David DeHart, Adtaxi's Director of Ad Operations, expanded on why Social Display outperformed standard banner ads. "From a marketing standpoint, there's so much clutter and noise with display ads. It's so easy to ignore them on a website. But Social Display stands out. When you see social engagement buttons and what looks to be an Instagram post but not on Instagram, there's some kind of psychological disruption that's positive."
These learnings enabled Adtaxi to confidently deploy the creative strategy at scale across its programmatic campaigns. Social Display allowed Adtaxi to double spend in programmatic, preserve ROAS, and ultimately double online sales for cbdMD even during the peak of the pandemic.
The campaign helped to propel cbdMD to the number three CBD company in the U.S. in Q4 of 2020. Today, it holds a 1.6% share of the CBD market in the U.S., according to this Brightfield Group report.
This is a huge win considering the explosive growth the CBD industry has seen. Last year, revenue reached $3.5 billion, and the industry is projected to reach $61.2 billion by 2027.
Because of the campaign's success, cbdMD Social Display ads are still running today. If you're searching for a differentiated and proven advertising strategy this year, reach out to Spaceback for a demo to learn more about how Social Display can be party of your future campaigns.
