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Trygg-Hansa buoys performance with the Microsoft Audience Network

  Article , Financial services , Tech and telecom , Success stories

Swedish insurance brand boosts impressions by more than 12x

Background

Azerion logo

When Microsoft Advertising announced in November 2021 that it was rolling out the Microsoft Audience Network to the Nordic region, one business paying close attention was Azerion. The digital entertainment and media platform connects brands with highly diversified audiences through digital advertising opportunities, across game and non game content. By partnering with Microsoft Advertising, Azerion enables search marketers to reach additional high quality traffic at significant scale. The arrival of the Microsoft Audience Network in new territories meant more opportunities for brands to combine the performance of search marketing with the extra reach and visibility of native ads. And Azerion had a client that fitted such an opportunity perfectly.

“Our goal with all our clients is to grow their business through more reach and better performance—and try out as many features as possible in order to do that,” explains Fredrika Lundberg, SEM Specialist for Azerion. “We had been working with the insurance company Trygg-Hansa, which has really strong, great-looking advertising for native environments—and so the opportunity for intent-driven native ads based on data signals was really interesting for them.”

The Microsoft Audience Network is actually outperforming search campaigns—and it’s quite a big difference. The cost per click (CPC) is much lower, the cost per acquisition (CPA) is much lower too—and since acquisitions for this campaign mean actual completed orders, that adds up to a much higher return on advertising spend (ROAS).

— Fredrika Lundberg, SEM Specialist for Azerion

Turning brand recognition into volume, traffic, and ROAS

Resolution logo

Trygg-Hansa is one of Sweden’s leading insurance businesses. It’s also one of the country’s strongest brands, thanks to its distinctive “life-buoy” identity and long-running initiative to position more than 80,000 such life buoys near popular swimming points. Trygg-Hansa and its performance agency, Resolution Sweden, were looking to leverage this brand strength to gain share in the highly competitive car insurance market.

“This was an important campaign for us because it was a priority product with a great deal of competition,” says Gemal Said, SEM Consultant for Resolution Sweden. “It was an opportunity to give Microsoft a bigger role in driving revenue, by finding extra lift, driving more volume, and growing Microsoft’s share of the budget.”

To take full advantage of the Microsoft Audience Network’s capacity for broader reach, Azerion and Resolution Sweden took a segmented approach. One campaign targeted in-market car insurance buyers (defined by activity such as recently buying a car). A separate remarketing campaign targeted those who had recently visited the Trygg-Hansa website. And finally, a third campaign targeted a broader audience in order to increase reach and catch potential buyers who would otherwise be missed.

“We excluded the in-market audiences and the remarketing audiences from our catch-all campaign, which gave us the freedom to lower our CPC bids for that campaign and go after wider reach,” says Fredrika from Azerion. “Using our other two campaigns, we could still bid higher for audiences who were showing definite intent signals.”

Blending reach and performance for instant results

This balanced approach enabled Trygg-Hansa to unlock the combination of reach, awareness, and performance that it required—with spectacular results. When Azerion and Resolution Sweden compared the native Audience Ads campaign with their previous pure search marketing, they found the number of impressions exploding by more than 12x. However, that wasn’t all. Comparing the period between January and March of 2022 with the previous year, clicks were up 900%, with a 31% increase in overall conversions. These clicks came with a CPC 87% cheaper, for an overall CPA that was 27% lower.

“The Microsoft Audience Network is actually outperforming the search campaigns—and it’s quite a big difference,” says Fredrika from Azerion. “The cost per click (CPC) is much lower, the cost per acquisition (CPA) is much lower too—and since acquisitions for this campaign mean actual completed orders, that adds up to a much higher return on advertising spend (ROAS).”

It’s also a performance that is continually improving, as Azerion and Resolution Sweden use the results to optimize the campaign. “We keep adding more categories of intent signals to our in-market campaign, and that’s driving more volume and performance,” says Gemal from Resolution Sweden. “We’re also adding more image variations to the campaign—and looking to add video as well.”

It’s proof that native advertising can be much more than an awareness play for brands. When combined with intent data, it emerges as a major force in performance marketing as well. “We’ll definitely be using the Microsoft Audience Network for other clients,” says Gemal from Resolution Sweden. “We found it really simple to set this campaign up from scratch without needing to import from other platforms. We could create the segmentation we wanted—and we saw results almost instantly.”

We’ll definitely be using the Microsoft Audience Network for other clients.

— Gemal Said, SEM Consultant for Resolution Sweden

See case summary

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