AdKaora

Mondadori Media’s innovative MarTech Centre – created around the digital company AdKaora following the acquisition of Hej! in 2021 and then the Spanish media agency Adgage, completed a few months ago – aims to offer the market a wide range of next-generation marketing and advertising services.
The offering ranges from proximity marketing solutions to data-driven performance conversational marketing solutions, from mobile first video advertising solutions to a creative studio able to offer customers high-impact and highly effective advertising formats.

The synergies between AdKaora, Hej! and Adgage – which today make up Mondadori Media’s MarTech Centre – began at the end of 2022 with the aim of guaranteeing, from a technological standpoint, better development of new integrated solutions, to enhance the different professional skills available and to maximise commercial effectiveness and go-to-market.
It was a successful undertaking, cemented by the results achieved in 2023, which showed total revenues of more than 32 million euros, up by almost 30% compared to the previous year, alongside the team continuing to grow stronger, and which now numbers 80 professionals across Milan, Rome and Madrid.

GROWTH DRIVERS

International development is one of the strategy’s most important drivers. The acquisition of the Spanish company Adgage opened up important new international opportunities in 2023, starting in Spain itself and, in recent months, Latin America.
This allowed AdKaora and Hej! to expand into foreign markets and to extend the AdKaora Value Network, thanks to the entry of important new publishing groups worldwide, with entry into other European markets and beyond also planned for 2024.

The second development lever for the coming years is the search for companies that can be integrated in order to offer innovative and complementary solutions to the range of services already offered. A number of interesting special operations are already under consideration in this area.

The third area of development focuses on the strong ability of the in-house marketing, tech and innovation teams to continue developing new products by understanding the opportunities that technological developments provide ahead of time. Along these lines, AdKaora has recently launched new advertising solutions on the market, like Impact Video, a high-impact, full-screen mobile format that is part of an advanced total video strategy covering different channels and focusing on the most interesting current KPI: Attention. The effectiveness of AdKaora’s video formats has been proven by the excellent results in ‘The Attention Game’ research conducted by GroupM and by KPIs provided by third-party certifiers such as Lumen and DoubleVerify.

Proximity marketing has also taken a further leap towards even more effective coverage of the entire consumer funnel thanks to the partnership with Savi – a marketing technology company specialising in coupon-based shopper activation services – where the aim is to strengthen product consideration and purchase incentives through mobile couponing.

Consideration becomes a crucial stage to oversee in order to achieve more concrete results: 2024 will therefore see the consolidation of AdKaora and Hej’s! full funnel proposal, which combines the quality of products with branding focus of the former with the performance strength of the latter.
The strength of Hej! Lies in harnessing Artificial Intelligence at different product and analysis levels. Using its proprietary platform, which is increasingly advanced in terms of analysis automation, Hej! can offer its customers in-depth qualitative analyses aimed at optimising the results of the entire supply chain. With data collected in real time, it is possible to achieve optimal performance and act on the subsequent marketing steps, like processing a qualitative lead.

And it is specifically Generative Artificial Intelligence that the Mondadori Group intends to invest in significantly in the coming years, not least to support the growth of the MarTech Centre. In this respect, a major Open Innovation project will soon be launched, which will also see Mondadori Media at the centre of the AI-related revolution in publishing and marketing.

A NEW STRUCTURE FOR THE MARTECH HUB

In order to achieve its ambitious goals, the MarTech Centre has established a new organisational structure.
Reporting directly to Andrea Santagata, Managing Director of Mondadori Media, Davide Tran, formerly Director of AdKaora, was appointed as Director of the MarTech Centre, with the aim of implementing the new development strategy and maximising synergies.
Reporting directly to Davide Tran, Stefano Argiolas was confirmed as Managing Director of Hej! and appointed the Head of Artificial Intelligence for the Mondadori Group; Paolo De Santis, Co-Managing Director of Hej!, was appointed the Head of Development of New Acquisitions for the MarTech Centre.
To strengthen international development, Luca Nigro, former Managing Director of Adgage, was appointed the Director of Development for the MarTech Centre in LATAM countries; Francesco Binetti, Head of Operations at AdKaora, was appointed the Director of International Development for the MarTech Centre’s Publisher Solutions.
The central sales department is entrusted to Paolo Ingrosso, appointed as Sales Manager for the MarTech Centre, and Luigi D’Alterio, Sales Manager of Hej! and MarTech Centre’s direct customers, while Walter Ferrari assumes the role of Marketing Manager.

AdKaora and Hej!, the Mondadori Group’s MarTech Centre digital agencies, and Savi, a marketing technology company specialising in managing shopper activation services using discount coupons, have been chosen by Sofidel, a leading manufacturer of paper for hygienic and domestic use to promote the Regina Asciugoni product with a proximity marketing campaign aimed at distributing digital discount coupons.

The campaign ran online in November and December 2023, together with Wavemaker, and was aimed at product awareness and drive to store, through multichannel planning: standard and interstitial display, push notifications, formats and notifications on the Stocard app, Hej! social media. All these formats were shown to the target group of shoppers and frequent shoppers nearby Esselunga sales points and let them get on Savi’s form or on Hej!’s “AI based” conversational landing page, in the case of social media, with the aim of getting the users to download the coupon.

The project’s goal was to intercept the target audience nearby the relevant sales points for the campaign and tell them about the existing product offer, influencing the shopper journey through mobile couponing. According to research by Iri FMCG Demand Signals, more than 40% of Italian households search for discounts and offers when shopping.

The results were positive: on four different placements (AdKaora network, Push Notification, Stocard, Hej!) the campaign reached about 1 million users and about 24,000 users lgot to the landing pages, and over 4,000 coupons were generated.

Moreover, a CTR on AdKaora display formats of 1.63% and on push notifications of 2.45% were recorded, confirming the users’ interest and consideration for the product and the offers activated.

The combination of AdKaora’s advanced proximity marketing suite and Savi’s shopping activation technology enables brands to enhance their marketing strategies, boosting brand awareness, consideration and conversion through the integration of Savi’s technology in the main sales point checkouts and through AdKaora and Hej!’s multi-channel planning. This makes it possible to engage users at the points of interest involved in the campaign, but also to gather important insights for brands about consumer behaviour through footfall and post-campaign analysis.

AdKaora and Savi are active with digital coupons on a major retailer network covering several large-scale retail chains in Italy, including Coop, Acqua e Sapone, Iper, Esselunga, and Carrefour. Savi’s platform is integrated with the ecosystem of individual retailers and allows the shopper to redeem promotions in every large or small sales point increasing product consideration and encouraging impulse purchases.

Andrea Zermian, Sales and Marketing Director for Savi said: “From the outset, Sofidel showed great interest and confidence in the proposal we presented to the market through our partnership with AdKaora. The results were encouraging and this further strengthens the partnership’s development prospects. Today, we are able to offer brands an end-to-end, measurable, omnichannel tool that closes the circle of every promotion by providing timely data on both consideration, thanks to issuing coupons, and actual conversion, thanks to the use of coupons at checkouts. This means it’s not only a matter of engaging customers when they are inside the sales point doing their shopping, but also in the consideration phases: announcements, supported by having a voucher, positively impact on perception by leveraging a concrete benefit that supports the customer through the subsequent phases of the funnel”.

Davide Tran, CEO of AdKaora, stated: “Together with Sofidel and our partner Savi, we wanted to achieve very specific communication goals, such as reinforcing product consideration and encouraging purchase by using digital coupons. In addition to achieving high reach numbers with multi-channel planning, another important result was the collection of qualitative leads through Hej!’s conversational marketing, which enabled significant performance in terms of coupon generation and redemption at the sales point. We would like to bring continuous innovations into proximity marketing strategies not only for distribution channels but also in terms of results by adding other “last mile” solution that give a nod to customers’ wishes”.

AdKaora, the Mondadori Group’s digital agency specialising in user-centric mobile advertising and proximity marketing, has been recognised by Google as a Google Certified Publishing Partner (GCPP), an important certification that strengthens the partnership between the two companies, underlines the development of an increasingly solid expertise in favour of the market and the knowledge of Google’s main online advertising products.

The AdKaora Value Network team has, in fact, been committed over the years to provide publishers with a technological and strategic consulting service, to maintain the highest results and market standards when it comes to advertising KPIs such as brand safety and viewability, and to meet and exceed the expectations of the clients in managing their advertising sales.

Publishers today face increasingly complex challenges due to changing user habits towards media and the emergence of new regulations to keep up with. At the same time, there is a growing demand for high-quality advertising experiences and especially for impactful video formats.

AdKaora, therefore, is recognised as one of the first partners in Italy skilled in the use of Google’s entire suite of advanced tools, which, combined with its proprietary technology, make it possible to amplify advertising revenues and unlock new avenues for growth, even abroad.

In addition, AdKaora’s Value Network has now crossed the Italian borders and started its international expansion thanks to Adgage, a Spanish company recently acquired by Mondadori Group, that is already working with top tier publishers in the Spanish, Portuguese and LATAM markets. The strategy for the future is to bring the footprint of AdKaora’s products and services to many other countries worldwide.

For AdKaora, being a GCPP means:

– having a privileged channel with Google and defining an integrated workflow with Google’s technological solutions for publishers

– creating an additional level of trust between customers and partners, as the evaluation process to obtain certification was careful and scrupulous

– allowing publishers to focus on what they love doing most: creating great content.

The certification is further proof of AdKaora’s ability to maximise advertising revenue, implement innovative, next-generation formats including in AMP, and deliver international brands’ premium campaigns on publishers’ web properties, all while providing advanced advertising trend analysis.

Davide Tran, CEO AdKaora comments: “We are proud to be recognised as a Google Certified Publishing Partner: this distinguishes us within the market and confirms our commitment to supporting and developing innovative solutions and quality services for clients and publishers. Thanks to the unique combination of our proprietary technologies, state-of-the-art formats, Value Network and sales teams, we help publishers to reach an ever higher level in their monetisation strategies. For the future, we are determined to further improve our performance and become not only an important but an essential partner for our customers, helping them to effectively grow their advertising revenues.”

AdKaora, the Mondadori Group digital agency specializing in user-centric mobile advertising and proximity marketing, was chosen by Boehringer Ingelheim to promote the launch of a new antiparasitic tablet available for purchase without a veterinary prescription, with a combined proximity marketing and digital out-of-home strategy.

The campaign appeared online in May and June and was managed together with Hearts&Science. The objectives were product awareness and drive to store, achieved by combining high-impact creative formats with advanced proximity tools. The result was a highly effective circular, multichannel project involving more than 2,000 pharmacies and nearby digital totem circuit.

To boost product awareness and encourage footfall in the related stores, the strategy involved the delivery of a mix of geolocal mobile display advertising and near-store push notifications, shown to customers near the related stores to direct users to AdKaora’s proprietary technology, Find&Go Now! It consists of a specially created interactive map customized with brand-recognition elements to guide consumers to the nearest store that carries the product.

The results were positive. The engagement rate stood at 26.4% and the footfall analysis showed that visitation uplift, i.e. the increase in visits to points of interest, reached 41.9%.

Francesca Santoro, Digital Brand Specialist Boehringer Ingelheim: “Working closely with stores through a multi-touch point approach is key in getting users to go the last mile. The activity with AdKaora in 2023 allowed us to bring a lot of people to pharmacies in just a few weeks”.

Davide Tran, CEO AdKaora: “The proximity marketing project implemented together with Boehringer Ingelheim shows the success of a multichannel planning, which acts effectively across the entire consumer funnel. From display formats that reinforce user engagement to push notifications that aim to intercept them at micro-moments of interest, combined with footfall analysis that measures increased visits to the related stores, the strategy has allowed us to achieve important results with great customer satisfaction and compliance with the required KPIs. In addition, by integrating the DOOH channel, we were able to plan hyperlocal content on the main digital systems in major Italian cities. Users exposed to the dual mobile and digital out-of-home channels had significantly higher visit rates and visitation uplift performance than users affected by only one of the channels”.

AdKaora, the Mondadori Group’s digital agency specialising in user-centric mobile advertising and proximity marketing, and Savi, a marketing technology company specialising in the management of discount voucher-based shopper activation services, form an exclusive partnership that aims to promote the use of digital coupons at the main retail brands.

It’s a project that aims to offer customers a new level of proximity marketing able to influence the shopper journey through mobile couponing. More than 40% of Italian families are dedicated to looking for discounts and offers, and almost 60% of them carefully evaluate prices and quantities of the products they intend to buy (Iri Fmcg Demand Signals, October 2022).

This is a buying habit that, according to research by Savi, has grown by 25%, compared to 2021, and which today represents 10.5% of total cash transactions.

The integration between AdKaora’s advanced proximity marketing suite and Savi’s shopping activation technology therefore makes it possible to enhance brands’ marketing strategies, encouraging brand awareness, consideration and conversion thanks to the involvement of different media channels: from standard display formats and rich media created ad hoc by AdKaora Creative Studio, to push notifications, through Stocard formats and social planning carried out together with Hej!.

These tools are combined with drive to store objectives, as well as product launches, loyalty, customer acquisition and sales increases, allowing us not only to engage the user in the points of interest involved in the campaign, but also to collect important insights for brands thanks to footfall and post-campaign analysis.

Andrea Zermian, Savi’s Sales and Marketing Director: “Until today, media strategies often stopped ‘outside the store’, failing to follow the customer until in converted into a transaction at the checkout. Today, thanks to the partnership with AdKaora, the loop of a promotional initiative closes with the purchasing act being measured promptly. The transaction, that uses digital coupons and that is done in a fully automated manner through the retailer’s checkout, allows you to follow the shopper through their journey, starting thanks to online media and ending with the transaction in the physical point of sale. So, ultimately, it’s a fully measurable, omnichannel end-to-end experience. Now, thanks to this new collaboration, we’ll also be able to influence customer purchasing behaviour in the ‘moment of truth’, i.e. when they’re inside the store and are shopping”.

Davide Tran, CEO of AdKaora: “The partnership with Savi allows us not only to enhance our advanced proximity marketing offering with an additional user engagement channel, but also to improve their shopping experience, getting close to what’s called the ‘last mile’ in a targeted manner. Savi’s digitalisation of the coupon was what many customers wanted and having an exclusive partnership with this solution allows us to be a unique player on the market. In fact, sending the coupon directly greatly affects the purchase behaviour since the user is more encouraged to use the discount they receive on a certain product in the next few days by going to the points of sale. So there’s an opportunity for brands to achieve very specific communication objectives, which at the same time strengthens the drive to store”.

How digital coupons work
The promotion is created digitally on the Savi platform and is distributed through AdKaora channels. It can be used exclusively in a paperless form, which helps both the user experience and managing accepting the coupons at the point of sale.

The CouponLink page, a web page delivered to the consumer with a unique URL, hosts multiple discount coupons, but using them at the checkout only requires that a single “box” barcode located at the top of the page be used. This way the coupons are used favours security and generates useful insights in real time, promoting a seamless experience for the shopper, without requiring them to subscribe to or download any mobile apps.

AdKaora, a digital agency specializing in user-centric mobile advertising and proximity marketing, Adgage, a Spanish company specialising in mobile advertising and partially acquired by Mondadori at the end of 2021, and Anzu.io, the world’s most advanced in-game advertising platform, have signed an exclusive partnership in the Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese markets to enhance the Mondadori Group’s offering with intrinsic in-game advertising.

AdKaora and Adgage have joined forces with Anzu to help more advertisers seize the unique opportunity to reach a vast target audience of gamers and gaming fans. This gives these companies the edge by anticipating the new communication opportunities that have emerged with the explosion of gaming and metaverse.

Now post-pandemic, the gaming phenomenon has exploded: the global gaming audience has expanded to 3.24 billion people, covering all age groups and nationalities. Accessing such a lean-forward target audience, with very little ‘second-screening’ or distractions from other media is one of the main incentives that increasingly drives brands to allocate more of their budgets into in-game advertising strategies.

Anzu boasts the world’s most advanced in-game advertising solution available across mobile, PC, consoles and Roblox, with IAB-recognized, highly immersive formats, and an expansive gaming inventory, including exclusive AAA titles from the world’s leading game studios like Ubisoft, Razor Edge Games, and Saber Interactive.

The company has also been named Best Ad Tech Platform at the Digiday Media Awards Europe 2022 and Best Tech Partner at 2022’s Drum Awards. Anzu’s patented 3D ad tracking engine and a full suite of integrations with third-party vendors, including Oracle Moat and IAS, provide first-to-market viewability measurement for in-game ads for direct and programmatic campaigns across platforms. Playing a large part in establishing the new Intrinsic In-Game Measurement Guidelines with IAB and MRC, Anzu’s efforts mean that advertisers have never had more confidence to invest in the in-game advertising medium.

Anzu also provides a gateway for many brands to activate advertising campaigns through the metaverse and gaming platform, Roblox. Recognized as one of the world’s best-known metaverses with stringent brand safety measures, particularly towards younger players, this presents brands with a unique opportunity to reach a very young, fast-growing audience aged 17-24 by engaging with them through multiple unique experiences.

Stephanie Lublinski, Head of Partnerships, Emerging Markets at Anzu: “There’s never been a more exciting time for brands to enter gaming as an advertising space. With over 50 million gamers in Italy, Spain, and Portugal collectively, the audience is there and advertisers have the opportunity to reach them right now. We’re delighted to partner with AdKaora and Adgage to broaden the horizons of brands and refresh their campaigns with the possibility of intrinsic, brand-safe, and attention-grabbing in-game ad campaigns.”

AdKaora and Adgage have already been launching in-game ad projects with Anzu that have helped to strengthen brand awareness, visibility, and key KPIs, while running in an environment with high brand safety guarantees. Data from HUMAN recently showed that out of 579M events, Anzu’s IVT averaged out at 0.36% on mobile and 0.11% on PC reaffirming that its in-game ad formats have much lower fraud rates than other forms of digital advertising.

Davide Tran, CEO AdKaora: “Video games today generate twice the revenue, in economic terms, of the film and music industries combined, making it a fast-growing form of entertainment with 15 million players in Italy. Because of this, the demand for communicating within the gaming world is increasingly high. For AdKaora to decisively enter a market is to do so with the best possible proposition, and with Anzu it was “game, set and match” at the first sight. We are happy to work with them, and in parallel with los hermanos of Adgage, to develop multi-country projects given the exclusive Italy, Spain and Portugal and develop innovative projects for brands, creating an ecosystem suitable for this type of advertising. Spoiler alert: the integration of Dakar, one of the most played driving simulation games in the world, with Anzu on consoles as well.”

The Observatory on changes taking place in markets and with consumers of AdKaora, the Mondadori Group digital agency specialising in user-centric mobile advertising and proximity marketing, published new research called  “In-gaming advertising: communicating is brand’s play”   that analyses the impact of the evolution of gaming on communication and online advertising.

Already extremely popular before the pandemic, over the past two years, video games have also proven to exert huge appeal to new audiences, including women, families and seniors, as well as the younger generations. A fact that has aroused immense curiosity in marketers regarding the new categories and their usage habits.

From the research conducted by AdKaora it emerges how – in a period of poor human interaction, where relationships have been mostly cultivated through technology – video games, digital activities at zero risk, have proved to be a valuable source for linking people, as well as a tool for escaping from reality and counteracting the boredom of spending entire days at home. A phenomenon which has consolidated into a real trend, and the numbers confirm that it is here to stay.

The objective of the study was to investigate the evolution of gaming and player profiles, to understand how brands can reach and interface with them in a more effective and significant way, not only thanks to market knowledge, but also to consumer habits and behaviour.

By using in-gaming advertising it is, in fact, possible to exploit the extremely high attention of users by inserting native advertisements within the game itself, to influence the graphics and/or audio of the gameplay without interrupting the user experience.

Here are the key findings that emerge from the study – here the full version is available for consultation:

•  Gamer. Who are you calling that?
  What happened to the player with glasses, Super Mario t-shirt and trainers on his feet? He no longer exists, or rather, the “archetypal” gamer profile no longer exists. Asking why people play and not what they are playing, is, therefore, the key to gaining a better understanding of this target and intercepting their needs, for developing direct and effective communication. Moreover, also in Italy, the gap between men and women has been progressively closed, as well as the difference between the age groups involved.
• Gaming is mostly mobile
  In addition to browsing, chatting and enjoying content, consumers are increasingly accustomed to playing on the go. Many games for mobile devices have low access levels: i.e., they are based on “familiar” genres such as puzzles, card games or betting, which can be played anywhere. According to a study conducted by IIDEA – Italian Interactive Digital Entertainment Association -, in Italy, gamers devote 8 hours a week to the game, 5 of which using a smartphone at various times of the day. A figure for which it is reasonable to predict that the number of players playing on mobile devices may increase even more during 2022.
• How to reach the gamers target?
  In-gaming advertising has – probably more than any other industry – a variety of emerging advertising formats that behave very differently from media in other channels. Thanks to immersive creativity inserted within the game dynamics in a native and realistic way, it is possible to create a positive association with the brand without interrupting the user experience, increasing awareness and enhancing brand recall.
• Communication opportunities
  A successful in-gaming advertising campaign enables a high brand recall rate: there are high chances for a gamer – mentally very receptive during the gaming experience – to recall the advertising messages that have been incorporated or, at least, the product in question. For brands, therefore, extremely interesting communication opportunities will open up, enabling them to take advantage of very precise profiling and thus build significant content experiences both inside and outside the game in a safe environment, considered by the user as R & R time during the day.

AdKaora, the Mondadori Group’s digital agency specialising in user-centric mobile advertising and proximity marketing, and Next 14, a leader in marketing technologies, are strengthening their partnership to offer customers a new cookieless solution tracking users’ purchasing decisions through identification of their touchpoints.

The new user identification method AdKaora is working on with Next 14 is based on matches between cookies and ID devices which, in full compliance with privacy legislation, enrich drive-to-store strategies with even more granular cross-device data to permit optimal planning of new high engagement formats for circular, multi-channel brand communications.

Next 14 recently launched its proprietary Rosetta algorithm: an innovative technology designed to help customers create their own private identity graph based on first-party data – that is, data derived from their own tools, such as CRM, web sites and analysis tools – with the goal of connecting different devices in a multi-channel form to improve campaign reach.

Brands and platforms will thus be able to obtain an all-round vision of their audience as they will know all the devices associated with a single person. This solution is made possible by assigning behavioural data linked with various touchpoints to a single profile, relying on first-party data, destined to become increasingly indispensable as third-party cookies are phased out.

Marco Brandstetter, Next Media – Data & Solutions CEO: “What every advertiser wants is to have an all-round vision of the audience. We work every day on innovative technologies for maximising the efficacy of engagement activities and simplifying the work of the professionals who rely on our tools. AdKaora is once again the partner that can make our tools perform better than anyone else, drawing on their experience and great connection with customers.”

The exclusive partnership between AdKaora and Next 14 has been consolidated by a historic synergy involving constant development of key tools for proximity marketing strategies, from the media involved to analysis of results: Next 14’s push notifications permit interception of consumers at important micro-instants, customising the brand’s message and sending users directly to AdKaora’s Find&Go Now!, an intuitive interactive map that guides customers to the nearest point of sale where they can purchase the desired item. Both tools make it possible not only to engage the user at the points of interest involved in the campaign, but to collect important insights for brands as a result of advanced footfall analysis.

With target definition based on the match between cookies and device ID, the two companies want to further perfect post-campaign insights to be provided to brands for fine-tuning future marketing projects.

According to AdKaora CEO Davide Tran: “We have been successfully working with Next 14 for several years to offer exclusive solutions that bring value to our customers with total respect for users’ privacy and UX. With this further project together, we and our partner have set ourselves the goal of identifying users, who are increasingly multi-device (desktop, smartphone, iPad) and multi-environment (online, offline and metaverse, web and apps), and identifying them as unique users in order to direct targeted, high-performing communications toward them via the most appropriate channel. But this is not all we want to do: through target segmentation based on identity graphs, we also want to supply and guarantee precise post-campaign analysis of consumers, offering brands precious qualitative information on users by following all the touchpoints they use in their customer journey.”

AdKaora, a Mondadori Group company specialising in user-centric mobile digital advertising and proximity marketing, has been chosen by Sutter to promote its Emulsio MangiaPolvere line of anti-static sprays with a proximity marketing strategy intended to cover all the steps in the funnel.

The campaign, managed with Asset Media and online in November and December, fully met key brand awareness and drive to store goals with a combination of creative high impact formats employing advanced proximity advertising tools to create a highly effect circular multichannel project.

Product awareness was boosted with a new-generation rich media format by AdKaora Creative Studio: the Geyser, an innovative graphic solution with high engagement power designed to offer users a unique brand experience. When opened, the format shows a product presentation video projected from below, ready to explode in the centre of the device’s screen with a geyser-like effect. An interactive carousel allows users to find out about the features of each product in a highly effective customised way through a series of calls to action designed to take users directly to the brand’s website and offer them more information on the item of interest.

To promote footfall in the stores involved in the campaign, the strategy involved use of a mixture of geolocal mobile display advertising formats and near-store, in-store and near-product push notifications, shown to customers in the vicinity of participating stores and set up to steer them to AdKaora’s proprietary Find&Go Now! technology, an interactive map that leads the consumer to the nearest shop where they can buy the product.

Results were positive in terms of both engagement rate and increased footfall: the interaction rate registered with the Geyser format was   13.6%; while the Find&Go Now! engagement rate was 25.6% and uplift in footfall at participating stores reached 22.3%.

To check the effect of the campaign, the AdKaora solutions were, moreover, combined with sales and product data collected through a qualitative analysis by CheckBonus and a quantitative analysis by IRI, both partners of the agency.

With CheckBonus, a variety of marketing tools was used to give visibility to the products and obtain valuable insights in terms of sales drill-down, sales by retailer and sell-out analyses, together with socio-demographic breakdown and consumer behaviour data. A special survey provided information on the factors that influenced purchases, brand and product perception, and the positioning of the brand with respect to competitors. It emerged that the most frequently visited stores were Coop, Conad and Famila: a result confirming the prominence of supermarkets among the points of sale, revealing the extent to which the brand is known for the variety of its products.

The analysis supplied by IRI, which monitors the effects of advertising on product purchasing during a specific period, highlighted positive results in terms of sales uplift with a sales increment of 1.45%.

Davide Tran, CEO AdKaora: “Another successful full pack proximity marketing initiative representing the perfect “marriage” of our rich media formats, which reinforce user engagement and position themselves at the top of the funnel, and our advanced proximity suite. For the latter, analysis of footfall, post-sales and brand lift surveys do not represent the end point of our strategy, but offer inspiration for better organisation of brands’ subsequent advertising plans, on the basis of exclusive insights about products and consumers. In this campaign with Sutter, we have once again achieved important results, to the customer’s great satisfaction, meeting the required KPIs.”

2021 was a year of growth for AdKaora and Hej!, the Mondadori Group digital companies specialised in mobile advertising and conversational marketing, which, following AdKaora’s acquisition of Hej! at the beginning of 2021, form the nucleus of MarTech, a cutting-edge digital hub and leading player in tech advertising.

With their focus fixed firmly on the future and new challenges, the two companies evolved over the year through product innovation, using their strong technological and know-how synergies to create increasingly effective adv solutions for their brands.

Their success is also confirmed by the results reported by the hub, which posted aggregate gross revenues of more than 20 million euro (preliminary figures) – with the newly acquired Hej! contributing approximately 8 million euro –, an improvement of over 50% from the previous year on a pro-forma constant-size basis.

THE MARTECH HUB OFFER – The secret of the success of the two companies is the ability to support their brands step by step in achieving their targets through a technologically advanced, creative consultancy-based approach, which also enabled them to strengthen relations with key clients on the market.

“The synergies between AdKaora and Hej! blended naturally right from the start,” said AdKaora CEO Davide Tran. “For example, the integration of proximity marketing in correlation with the performance marketing campaigns, two different but closely related areas. The new developments of our MarTech hub are still under way, in 2021 we took a first step towards expansion on the Spanish market with the acquisition of 30% of Adgage, a Madrid-based company, through which we aim to export our own products and those of Hej!. I am very satisfied with the remarkable results we achieved this year, and the opportunity to work closely with the Hej! team of talents, with whom we immediately established a strong bond and a shared vision of innovation and the market. 2022 will be a year when these synergies generate full value to offer our clients an unbeatable integrated offer,” Tran added.

In 2021 AdKaora developed a series of new adv solutions based on constant observation of the market. As a result, the proximity marketing offer reached a new level, introducing channels such as DOOH and SMS, and extending planning with rich media formats with a high engagement impact. It also saw the development of Circle, the proprietary platform that enables brands and media centres to monitor campaign results in real time.

In the last quarter of 2021, in anticipation of the gaming trend, AdKaora launched the new native in-play offer: immersive display formats inserted in game dynamics, where the focus is on brand and product awareness, thanks to the high visibility afforded by the communication message.

Hej! also reported unstoppable growth. “2021 was the first year for Hej! on the Mondadori Group’s MarTech hub, and it was very exciting,” said Hej! CEO Stefano Argiolas. “We established a natural alchemy with AdKaora, a process of continuous contamination enabling both companies to set and achieve ever more challenging objectives. Together we design and develop integrated solutions to cover the entire marketing funnel. At Hej! we have continued to invest in innovation and the evolution of our solutions, guided by our sole mantra: tangible results for clients. By its nature, conversational marketing gives us a privileged view of user needs: a view we use for in-depth analyses of aggregate campaign data in order to improve results continually and bring innovation into performance marketing, a segment that has been tied to obsolete processes for too long,” Argiolas added.

Hej! conversational marketing has become an indispensable solution for many brands because of the quantitative and qualitative results it delivers. Thanks to its robust data drilling capability, Hej! can use artificial intelligence to offer clients even more detailed qualitative analyses and campaign insights, which help the entire chain to optimise results. Automated real-time analyses is an undeniable advantage for optimal performance.

Creativity, conversation and customisation merge in the conversational audio display format recently launched by AdKaora and Hej!, which aims to engage all the consumer’s senses when they are choosing a product, and strengthen their discovery. This dynamic multi-sensory experience creates greater product awareness for both online and in-store sales.

The two agencies are also working on the development of brand lift survey solutions, which measure the brand-consumer interaction in an advertising campaign, and identify the extent to which the customer journey changes in terms of awareness, perception, consideration and purchase probability.

CASE HISTORY AND SUCCESSFUL FORMATS – A demonstration of these initial synergies is the successful Somatoline Cosmetic campaign for Bolton, presented by AdKaora and Hej! at IAB Forum 2021: the combination of proximity marketing and conversational marketing made it possible to cover every stage in the funnel, with a multi-channel strategy that guided the user in both online and offline stores, creating a personalised conversation channel with the consumer and following them as the protagonist of their purchase decisions.

The project achieved important results in terms of engagement and visits: AdKaora’s Find&Go Now! obtained a 26.6% engagement rate, reflecting a high stimulus to action and effective activation of drive-to-store dynamics, which led to a 54.4% increase in visits to sales outlets. Consumers also showed an offline/online balance in their purchase habits: from Hej!’s Conversational Engaging Marketing format, 53.4% of users landed on the brand’s e-commerce and, an almost equal share, 46.62% on Find&Go Now!.