A medium-sized US publisher wanted to grow their paid digital audience using banner advertising on their website.  They had been using run-of-site campaigns to deliver house ads and wanted to test targeted messaging to specific segments.

Mather Economics developed a custom audience segment using Listener™ that was expected to show a higher conversion probability based on measuring engagement.  The custom segment was loaded into Google’s Doubleclick for Publishers ad server by syncing cookies.  An A/B test was implemented through DFP to test Mather’s custom segment against a non-targeted run-of-site campaign, both with an equal volume of impressions.

After a month, the test was complete and showed intriguing results.  The ROS campaign showed a higher click-through rate (0.28% ROS vs. 0.10% for the Mather segment), however, when measuring actual visitor conversions to paid subscribers, the Mather segment outperformed the ROS campaign nearly 2:1.  The Mather segment was able to convert a higher proportion of visitors to a paid product with less inventory allocated to the house campaign.  Additionally, the publisher improved their KPI’s and reporting to track value-based metrics in addition to click-based metrics.