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CLIENT
Caltex Havoline Middle East
Services Provided
Display Advertising in English & Arabic Analytics Consulting
Background
Havoline is the leading global brand for motor oils, lubricants, and coolants, and part of Chevron Corporation, USA.
To increase brand awareness and promote sales across the GCC region – UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain – they wished to undertake a 2-months digital marketing campaign. The entire campaign was built on the theme “Keep Going With Havoline”.
To achieve the client’s objectives, we recommended Facebook and Instagram advertising, YouTube Advertising, Google Display Network (GDN) Advertising, and contextual display advertising on “Auto” related pages of popular sites/ apps such as Gulf News, Dubizzle, Wheels magazine, etc. All campaigns were to be run in English and Arabic.
We won the campaign pitch ruling out 2 other top agencies.
Strategy
- The total campaign budget was thoughtfully allocated across the 5 geographies based on their market size, and further split among the 3 channels of Social, YouTube, & Display based on the potential of each channel.
- The ad creatives for the display campaigns were provided by the client. We wrote the ad copy that would make the viewer aware of the strength and legacy of the Havoline brand, and the strong performance of their products.
- Given that the main objective of the campaign was brand awareness, and also that nearly every car driver could be a potential Havoline customer, we opted for a running an impressions-based display campaigns with a wide yet well-considered audience targeting. We also considered that it was men who were more likely to be decision makers on this product category, and with that in mind, a larger portion of the budget was used for reaching out to male audiences.
- Ads were targeted to automotive related websites/ apps, related topics, keywords, interests, affinity, and custom audiences created using a variety of metrics. Ads were also targeted on popular websites/ apps for news, sports, etc.
- The client initially provided us with standard display ads in various sizes – MPU, leaderboard, skyscraper, etc. However, we insisted also on responsive display ad sizes, and then had the opportunity to compare performance for both ad types. As was borne out from our past experience too, the responsive display ads performed much better than the standard display ads – 4X CTR vs standard display ads. After about 2 weeks of running the ads in all formats and seeing the significantly superior performance of the responsive display ads, we paused the standard ad sizes, and for the remainder of the campaign duration we ran only the responsive display ads.
- Since the campaign was an awareness one, we did not expect too much traffic to the website. Nonetheless, we ran remarketing campaigns for those few people who were interested in the product and had spent time on the website, so we could reinforce the brand to that interested audience.
Results
For an awareness based display campaign, the performance was well beyond benchmarks and the agreed plan. The client had a noticeable spurt in business volume during the campaign period and its aftermath.
With the use of the responsive display ads and well-written ad copy, we achieved a CTR of 3X vs plan.
More than 43Mn display ad impressions were recorded over the campaign duration of 2 months, and 60,000+ people visited the website.
The average time spent on the website from the display campaigns was 25 sec, which for an awareness focused display campaign, and for the “oils, coolants, & lubricants” business category is a considerable achievement by all accounts.
Impressions - Actual vs Plan :
103%
Clicks - Actual vs Plan :
301%
CTR - Actual vs Plan :
290%