ADT secures new customers with Microsoft Multimedia Ads

Article , Tech and telecom , Success stories

Smart home security company reaches new customers while increasing ROAS with new Microsoft Advertising solution

Background

For more than 145 years, ADT has made the security of our customers our top priority. Today, more than 25,000 professionals in over 300 locations throughout the United States and Puerto Rico help protect more than 6 million home, small business and commercial customers.

Being the first adopter of a new advertising feature is a great advantage when operating in a highly competitive marketing channel like paid search.

— David Boggio, Sr. Marketing Manager, ADT

Their approach: Testing a new highly visual ad format

An ADT van is parked outside a house while an ADT technician places an ADT sign in the garden

ADT partnered with Microsoft Advertising to move quickly and become the first in their industry to test the new and impactful Multimedia Ads feature. By leveraging the Microsoft Search platform and LinkedIn data, they could target their ideal consumers within the residential market with messaging optimized to search terms and audiences. Their goal was to generate additional website traffic and leads while maintaining cost-per-lead efficiency and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) comparable to the other search ads in the account.

The value of Microsoft Advertising Multimedia Ads

Example ADT Multimedia ad

Multimedia Ads is a feature that is unique to Microsoft Advertising—something that ADT could not get from any other platform—offering them the ability to serve additional ads for high-value targets. The Microsoft Advertising team worked with ADT to help them implement their strategy and make the process as smooth as possible.

ADT worked with its in-house creative agency to source many variations of quality images tailored to the aspect ratios of the new Multimedia Ads format. In terms of copy for the accompanying ad text, they stayed true to the messaging that had been successful in their market and maintained a similar level of audience granularity in their paid search ads. This approach allowed cleaner testing results by eliminating variables in performance that could have resulted in the need to create different ad copy.

The results

The test was a success! Our Multimedia Ads caused a significant increase in leads generated and customer acquisitions. In addition, ADT was thrilled to see 9.5x higher ROAS, a decrease in CPC, and improved results in paid search ads and Multimedia Ads for their search terms.

“The success of our test resulted in the adoption of Microsoft Advertising Multimedia Ads across paid search campaigns for our other business divisions,” noted David Boggio, Senior Marketing Manager at ADT.

We are thankful to have a close partnership with our team at Microsoft. They understand the needs of our business and take time to learn the intricacies of our advertising program. We use a very detailed approach to paid search, and they didn't shy away from collaborating on the workload with us—which involved creating over 11,000 new Multimedia Ads. Testing new advertising features is an excellent opportunity for us, and we look forward to more tests with Microsoft Advertising in the future.

— David Boggio, Sr. Marketing Manager, ADT

New opportunities to come

The success of this new approach in their residential market resulted in ADT's adoption of Multimedia Ads across paid search campaigns for their other business divisions. This new feature is now a core component of many paid search campaigns.