October 07, 2022
TV
Digital

A case study by VTB and Gazprom-Media Sales House: How to engage an audience’s interest in credit cards through interactive mechanics and precision targeting on IPTV

VTB has implemented a targeted advertising campaign to promote credit cards together with the Gazprom-Media Sales House, the Media Instinct advertising agency, and Platforma, a developer of big data-based business solutions. This article explains the search for the most relevant audience among TV viewers, the choice of targeting, and a two-times increase in the CTR.

Tasks

  • Stimulate applications for VTB credit cards
  • Continue the formation of the perception that VTB is the bank with the best card offers on the market
  • Convey the benefits of the card to the target audience: 110 days interest-free and free card service and delivery.

Solution

The communication and media tasks were addressed with the launch of an advertising campaign in the interactive TV format. The campaign ran from May 26 to July 3 on Gazprom-Media Holding’s TNT, Match TV, NTV, and TV3 TV channels. This allowed high outreach of TV viewers who receive the signal through IPTV set-top boxes.
The campaign’s distinctive feature was its use of Platforma data for targeting. The experts selected a basic audience segment among IPTV set-top box users which included consumers aged 18 to 44 years old. Then, those interested in lending and shopping were identified among them.
Interest in this topic was determined on the basis of anonymized data received from Rostelecom on the behavior of Internet users, visits to bank websites, resources on lending, and large trading platforms and marketplaces. The target audience segment was thus formed and later delivered to the GetShop.TV platform which was used to broadcast the material.

Creation of audience for targeted advertisement using Platforma

Interactive mechanics

Clients of the Gazprom-Media Sales House have long been able to display creative material on ITV in rotation, however, this is the first time it has been used in a commercial advertising campaign.
Several creative approaches to the material with different messages were used in the campaign, each broadcast to the entire target audience. Thanks to this, the communications were quite diverse, and viewers could see the offers that were most interesting to them.

What it looked like on the air

An informer appeared on the TV channels during programs with an offer to apply for a VTB credit card. Clicking the Ok button on the remote control opened a microsite explaining the advantages of VTB cards and displaying a QR code to proceed to the application.

Results

  • The total outreach of the campaign on all channels was 860,000 households, compared to a forecast of 620,000.
  • Such indicators were achieved by controlling the cross-channel frequency on IPTV set-top boxes, which allowed the reduction of intersections of the audience on the channels.
As a result, the unique CTR reached 4.28%, which is 2.3 times greater than for campaigns without targeting and 22% greater than campaigns on similar topics with age-focused targeting.
When developing and planning the promotion of financial products, we pay great attention to surveying our potential clients’ needs. We regularly conduct various studies to identify changes in the behavior of the target audience. One of our latest studies has shown that credit cards are increasingly perceived and used as substitutes for debit cards: more than 50% of cardholders use them to pay for everyday expenses such as groceries, transport, ordering food, and so on. This has been influenced by the extension of the interest-free period, free service, and loyalty programs, among other things. Therefore, in planning the advertising campaign, it was important for us not only to reach a wide audience, but also to take their changing needs into account. We are always looking for new tools and solutions to improve effectiveness in promoting our products. Certainly, we have used the content targeting available on Smart TV before, but that only indirectly allowed us to understand users’ interests. The use of big data in IPTV has opened up new opportunities for targeting TV advertisement, taking the individual needs of users interested in the product into account. This allowed us to significantly reduce non-targeted contacts and improve placement efficiency.
For a long time, there have been no tools on the Russian market that allowed advertising campaigns on TV and in the digital space with a single targeting and performance evaluation and without dividing the audience into viewers and users. The world is continuously developing: TV signal delivery technologies are being improved, household audience data is emerging, and targeting and conversion tools are being developed for the traditional television audience. We are glad that new opportunities are being added to the advertiser’s toolkit, and we, as a Sales House, are actively involved in the implementation of the first examples on our platforms.
Today, millions of Russians watch TV via set-top boxes connected to the network. This combination of television and Internet has opened up new opportunities for targeting on TV. Huge amounts of anonymized data on purchases in supermarkets and digital interests can now be compared with TV viewing to focus direct TV advertising on a specific target audience. This approach offers TV advertisement a new life and makes its effectiveness clearly measurable. We have learned not only to create narrow target audience segments for specific client requests, but also to compare the IDs of those who see an advertisement on TV and who make purchases in stores during a certain period. Advertisers will therefore be able to see concrete returns from TV campaigns.
Over the past three years, interactive advertisement, as a tool at the junction of TV and the digital space, has become an integral part of the advertising splits of most large clients. New targeting opportunities have emerged thanks to our integration with our colleagues at Platforma, which significantly expands our range of tools with the dynamic adaptation of advertising messages to viewers’ interests and the ability to target narrow or specific segments. These new features make the tool more attractive to a broad audience of advertisers. It is especially pleasing that VTB has been the first to test the new opportunities in the financial sector.
Over the past three years, interactive advertisement, as a tool at the junction of TV and the digital space, has become an integral part of the advertising splits of most large clients. New targeting opportunities have emerged thanks to our integration with our colleagues at Platforma, which significantly expands our range of tools with the dynamic adaptation of advertising messages to viewers’ interests and the ability to target narrow or specific segments. These new features make the tool more attractive to a broad audience of advertisers. It is especially pleasing that VTB has been the first to test the new opportunities in the financial sector.

Do you want to advertise?

Send us a message right now, and our managers will get back to you right away!

What type of advertising are you after?

TV sponsorship
Radio advertising
Video advertising
Streaming Ads
Digital
Brand licensing
Other