Insight
Intel powers today’s connected world as one of the largest suppliers of chip processors found inside most personal computers. With political instabilities in Brazil, Intel sought a market with solid growth and high PC penetration in Latin America. Consequently, Mexico became an opportunity for Intel after seven years of advertising inactivity in the market. Intel’s sales strategy changes brought several challenges upon the brand’s media plan and positioning, however.
Starting with its target audience, Intel had to connect with millennials, a tech-savvy generation that didn’t grow-up with the brand or hear from them directly for years. Brand awareness became pivotal, revealing the importance of building a message that would be relevant and relatable. With the distribution strategy set to reach this target audience being as crucial as the messaging, after all this campaign would break years of silence in Mexico.
By enlisting actor, Jim Parsons, from the popular comedy series The Big Bang Theory, as a spokesperson, Intel appealed to their tech-savvy audience while connecting to their established pop-culture interests. Intel’s creative was king, using a face and messaging that appeals to this target.
Parsons connects the dots between the technology being promoted and the comedy throughout the ad, which focuses on troubles with old PCs. Following that theme, the brand aimed to galvanise passive PC owners to upgrade their PCs – shortening the purchasing cycle to a year. Video became the star format, mobile the star screen, and programmatic the star transactional method. All three variables yielding optimised returns.
Strategy
To drive brand awareness, Intel used two 30-second video spots targeted to millennials (men and women between ages 18-35) who account for over 1/3 of Internet users in Mexico. As a re-launch of the brand in the region, the mobile video campaign ran in Mexico only from April 7th – May 31st. This market has one of the largest penetration of PCs in LATAM.
To tap into its audience after years without brand exposure, Intel was challenged with creating the most effective and efficient media strategy to match the preferences and tastes of these technologically advanced millennials in a sea of digital platform options. To drive purchase intent through reach, Intel allocated a portion of its media mix to TV/OOH, while the rest focused on digital. Intel’s digital strategy included running ads on desktop and through social media channels. However, for the most successful digital distribution and to bolster both reach and viewability, Intel partnered with its leading video media partner in LATAM for use of their SSP. Their video media partner has the largest platform of premium publishers in LATAM and the native mobile format, inRead. The inRead format has been shown to increase brand lift, at times by double digits, when compared to other widely used video advertising formats.
Globally, of the average 417 total minutes a user spends per day consuming media, 217 minutes (52%) is consumed through mobile devices, surpassing desktop and TV combined, per Millward Brown. Locally, Mexico parallels with an average of 391 total minutes per day consuming media, of which 195 minutes (50%) is consumed through mobile.
With a mobile-first approach that demonstrates Intel’s commitment to the growing demand in the market and its desire to increase purchase intent, Intel chose to run the video ads on mobile screens using the innovative format, inRead Mobile, an essential component to the success of this campaign.
Execution
Given Intel’s leadership in the technology sphere, and because more consumers are now found on mobile screens, Intel chose to programmatically distribute its video ads using inRead Mobile. inRead is an in-article native video expanding within editorial content upon user response. A recent study demonstrated that users recognise the format as non-intrusive compared to pre-rolls. Particularly in mobile, users are more sensitive to intrusive ads and less receptive to long ads. Hence, a native outstream format was key for Intel.
Currently, more than 60% of traffic to Mexico’s top online news sites comes from mobile devices. With inRead Mobile, brands can reach users across any mobile device using a landscape format. The opt-in video unit includes skipping capabilities from the start and sound controlled by the user, respecting the user’s choice.
By placing ads natively within editorials that consumers are already engaged with, plus giving users the option to view, inRead formats have been proven to increase key KPI’s like ad awareness, brand favorability and most importantly purchase intent, as is reflected in Intel’s superior campaign results.
Intel relied on its video media partner's technology and its network of premium publishers in their SSP, to achieve the reach needed for this mobile campaign. Plus, using a programmatic strategy, meant the ads were targeted to a more relevant and engaged audience.
Nielsen was the research partner measuring the brand lift through a short survey voluntarily taken by the viewer. The questionnaire measured brand attributes, affinity and purchase intent.
Results
Intel’s strong creative and content, coupled with its video media partner's mobile technology and premium publishers led to outstanding results and massive reach. Together, the programmatic and mobile arms optimised ROI, surpassing industry standards and pushing Intel’s internal benchmarks on all fronts.
Overall, inRead Mobile delivered more than 5.3 million impressions resulting in 3.1 million completed views (60% completion view rate). The CTR of 0.81% is five times the industry benchmark for this kind of distribution, equating to more than 43,000 clicks.
With this campaign, the client also registered a 9.6 brand lift as of May 31st, almost 30% above Intel’s Q4 2015 brand lift of 7.5 (across all platforms in LATAM). In other words, purchase intent was nine times more favourable after watching the ad. For this campaign as a whole, only with inRead Mobile was Intel able to surpass this benchmark, attesting to the effectiveness of mobile, video and programmatic in today’s market which continues skyrocketing in growth.