Case Study Confirms the Effectiveness of Quality Environments in Programmatic Deals

The agency masterplan ran a campaign for the client Hermes Germany in November using Private Market Place (PMP) deals on the Ströer Supply-Side Platform (Ströer SSP). Supporting market research shows that a noticeably better campaign performance could be achieved compared to an open auction and confirms the effectiveness of quality environments in programmatic deals compared to generic purchasing methods.

Ströer’s technical and procedural framework offers optimal access to quality environments and target groups for programmatic purchasing: Ströer’s entire premium inventory is available via the Private Market Place (PMP) and PMP deals can be customised and enhanced with high-quality target group data. Proprietary technologies, such as Ströer SSP, offer the most direct inventory access and allow for the optimisation of campaign-related performance values such as reach, viewability or performance KPIs. 

In a recent case study, Hermes Germany, masterplan and Ströer revealed the influence that the targeted control of pre-selected quality inventories and target groups has on campaign performance compared to generic purchasing: A programmatic online advertising campaign by the parcel service provider was supported with market research by the DCORE Institute. The KPIs examined were advertising recall and recognition within the target group. The campaign setup consisted of an open auction (generic purchasing) and private deals on the Ströer SSP. For private deals, a distinction was made between deals with selected premium environments and pre-targeted deals in which both premium environments and the target group were pre-selected. The private deals performed better than the open auction in all KPIs analysed. The pre-targeted deals, for which Ströer had already stored target group data, performed best.

“As a media agency, we are committed to generating the greatest possible advertising success for our clients with the resources used. We believe that excellent consultation, planning and implementation are the keys to achieving this. Alongside other factors, the environment in which an advertisement is positioned plays a major role in the likelihood of it attracting attention and the length of time it is viewed, making it a fundamental factor for advertising recall and consequently for the impact of the advertisement,” says Carsten Riemann-Kafsack, Managing Director of masterplan media.

“With our Private Market Place on the Ströer SSP, where we can create customised deals for our customers and which runs entirely via proprietary technology, we offer secure and effective access to premium inventories. This allows us to effectively fulfil individual customer requests in a programmatic environment. Our current case study demonstrates that quality environments in programmatic deals can increase performance values by up to 55 per cent,” says Christoph Herick, VP Programmatic Sales, Ströer Digital Media GmbH.

Ströer advertises across more than a thousand websites and reaches around 50 million unique users per month, or over 80 per cent of internet users. The environments are all of a very high standard and stand out for their high quality: Ströer attaches great importance to the safe placement of advertising (“brand safety”) – with simultaneously high visibility (“viewability”) and accuracy of targeting (addressing target groups).

Study Design

Campaign period: November 2023

Advertiser: Hermes Germany

Agency: masterplan

Target group: People who receive/send parcels or drop off returns

Advertising formats: Sitebar, Halfpage Ad, Mobile Docker Ad, 

Methodology: Online survey via an online access panel

Sample size: Initial round = 308, Total measured = 1,047  

Overview of Results

ADVERTISING RECALL

The pre-targeted PMP deals performed best. Here, unaided and aided advertising recall is significantly higher with an index value of 155 than in the open auction.

RECOGNITION

Recognition of pre-targeted PMP deals was significantly higher with an index of 121 compared to the open auction.