Bauer Media (UK) moved away from selling vertical audiences to its advertisers (brands) and instead adopted a horizontal portfolio approach that focuses on first-party data. The results were remarkable: the media group was able to increase its revenue by 75%.
Google is now moving to allow users to decide whether they want to reject third-party cookies (*sigh*), there’s a lot to consider. Now more than ever, publishers are looking for solutions that will enable them to maintain – and grow – their revenues as the industry landscape changes once again.
Bauer Media was already one of the UK’s leading publishers, but it faced a challenge: it needed to find a way to accept and avoid privacy updates and frequent browser changes in order to better reach and engage its audiences. The challenge was further compounded by the fact that Bauer’s targeting strategy was based solely on contextual data and did not use audience data.
This had to change.
Beat change
Bauer turned to Permutive to help the publisher move from a brand-centric audience strategy to an audience and portfolio strategy. But this wasn’t going to be easy, especially given the silos that exist in a multi-brand, multi-market business like Bauer’s. A massive internal shift was needed to convince teams to sell the entire portfolio rather than just individual brands.
Bauer worked with Permutive at the heart of its data strategy and set out to make Illuminate – the publisher’s premium solution for targeted advertising across all publishing and audio ad formats – its standard solution.
As part of the solution, Bauer began using Permutive’s campaign and audience insights tool to dive deeper into its portfolio and aggregate unique first-party data and insights from campaigns across its lifestyle and specialty brands. Meanwhile, for more complex advertising requests, Bauer began using Permutive’s audience planning tool.
Bauer has demonstrated that media owners and buyers can monetize and model first-party signals at scale by collaborating to drive orchestrated revenue. We are proud to partner with Bauer and have the opportunity to significantly enhance their first-party targeting solution.
Joe Root, CEO and co-founder of Permutive
Alignment throughout the company
By focusing on this, Bauer has been able to differentiate itself from other publishers. The company has been able to challenge stereotypes around its brands and enter previously untapped markets – for example, it was able to increase the click-through rate of a technology brand by 20%, despite owning no technology-focused publications of its own.
In addition, Bauer has prioritized programmatic and direct selling, which has helped the company build long-term brand relationships and outperform publishers that rely solely on the open marketplace.
But what really made Bauer stand out with Illuminate is the cultural change it is driving across the company. Sales teams have begun to take a longer-term perspective and are now better able to tailor their strategies to customer needs.
Deliver results
By partnering with Permutive and repositioning Illuminate, Bauer achieved significant results including a 75% increase in revenue, a 152% growth in customer base and a 31% increase in average CPM across the network year-over-year.
When looking at individual campaigns, Bauer was able to achieve 59% brand recall for a technology brand – significantly higher than through other channels – while a retail brand benefited from 69% brand awareness, 59% action taken and 73% advocacy.
A car manufacturer worked with Bauer to remind 23% of users that they had seen ads for the brand compared to a control group, and 12% were more likely to agree that the brand is a leader in electric cars compared to the control group. Meanwhile, a book campaign aimed at “book lovers” saw 1.7% unique ad engagement from a growing younger audience (25-44 years old).
“Since switching, we have seen an increase in engagement around our advertising campaigns of up to 53%,” said Nat Francis, Digital Revenue Operations Director at Bauer Media Group.
We will provide further insights into the transformative impact of first-party data at our Media Revenue conferences on October 1 in Berlin, Germany, and on October 9 in Austin, Texas, USA. Book your ticket here.
