Unify tripled data revenues, increased reach by 4x, and grew the percentage of impressions sold with first-party data from less than 1% to 10% in the first year by partnering with Permutive, reaching 16% in Q2 of 2021.
After testing the power of its data offering, via a campaign for a multinational beauty brand, Unify found that using a general cohort for beauty increased click-through rates (CTR) by 46% when compared to a campaign without data. And a niche cohort for beauty+ increased CTR by 4X. A similar test for a camera brand showed that using a general cohort increased CTR by 2X.
So far, Unify has trained more than 100 sales team members on Permutive and its data offering has helped to win 10 advertiser and agency deals. These deals are larger too, in regards to the volume of revenues and maturity of the clients.
Insights to activation
By implementing Permutive, Unify diversified its revenue base, activity, and empowered its sales offering. Rather than having insights on one side and activation on the other, Unify can now use the Insights Lab to create bespoke cohorts for brand clients. For example, a cohort for users with a family who eat organic food, like cooking, and are looking at content for electric cars. When the cohort matches the brief and the insights prove relevant, Unify can now action this cohort within the Permutive platform — a core differentiator for Unify. Unify Insight Lab is also natively connected to its audience targeting to facilitate seamless marketing from insights to activation.
Empowering the sales team
Unify’s data offer was the first to be grouped during the M&A process; previously the sales team had been selling website-by-website. It shifted its value in the market as they were more confident in their ability to draw from relevant insights and cohorts across the whole group. “The sales teams feel more empowered and proud to take this data offer and targeted offers to the market. They feel like it’s a great innovation and that we are at the forefront of a new transformation,” says Dounia Zouine, Group Chief Data & Digital Officer at Unify Group.
Building direct brand relationships
“Permutive helped us to disintermediate the relationship that we have with brands, to be able to speak to them directly. We are now invited at least two to three times a year to give an elevator speech and input to the marketing strategy adopted for FMCG brands. They feel that they can rely on the insights that we have before deciding on new creatives in new orientations, new messages they need to work with their agency.”
“We were able to grow in terms of hierarchy in the people that we are talking to, so instead of only talking to people doing programmatic, we now have many workshops with CMOs, digital CEOs, and digital directors. They consider us more broadly within a digital marketing strategy, rather than the end of the chain where you’re going to deliver your message.”
Next steps
Building on success
Unify are planning on launching and accelerating other projects based on the success of implementing Permutive, having established the expertise and confidence with the Unify Group board members.
Investigating measurement
As part of its cookieless roadmap, Unify is looking into how the market measures the investment and ROI of campaigns. Traditional KPIs are not always publisher friendly so Unify has an internal task force to propose different KPIs that will help brands see the impact of doing media with a publisher.
See how Unify partnered with Permutive