2015 Silver Best Use of Search

Periscopix

Toys 'R' Us

Results "R" Us

Campaign Overview

Toys“R”Us aspired to maintain a 10:1 ROI while increasing its marketing spend, integrate its pay-per-click with other channels, turn new users into loyal customers and tap into strong direct response and user engagement using YouTube and AdWords for Video. By getting very granular and serving highly personalised ads, the toy retailer managed to do all this and more.

Strategy

Everyone remembers the excitement of a trip to the toy store as a child, running around the aisles and trying to choose what to get with their hard-saved pocket money. But it’s hard for most people to have the same excitement when buying toys online, with millions of products to choose from and no chance to test them all out.

So Toys“R”Us served specific and tailored ads that depended on the individual and got them excited by toys that mattered to them and their kids. Online and offline marketing were joined up to deliver an integrated experience. The brand’s existing targeting and loyal user base were developed to saturation point, at which point it diversified its targeting and moved up the funnel to test where to place new spend. As it captured more customers, it pumped more funds into the bottom of the funnel to grow its loyal user base.

Creativity

To get granular, Toys“R”Us split its 20,000 products into groupings by category, brand and product ID, allowing tailored bids at product level – a no-brainer, as just a few products can make or break ROI.

With 80 UK superstores, offline sales are still core for Toys“R”Us, so online users store were shown product pages with their nearest click-and-collect store directions.

While retailers slashed margins on Black Friday, Toys“R”Us offered no deals at all, instead hiking up budgets and boosting PPC presence on core terms.

One-day basket abandoners were incredibly effective but the list was tiny, so an incremental approach increased bids in the most effective audience lists first before moving onto the next.

TV, PR and AdWords for Video hit new users with co-ordinated messaging, while new budget was put into YouTube in-stream and in-display ads at peak seasons.

Results

The campaign surpassed all expectations. Despite a 56% increase in year-on-year spend, search ROI actually increased to £13.14 for every £1.

By targeting online users near specific high-street stores with PPC, 17,428 click-and-collect orders with a sales value over £1.6 million were driven.

And while most advertisers use YouTube as a branding platform, Toys“R”Us ambitiously used it to drive strong sales volumes and good user engagement, with a £4.30 ROI. Video remarketing lists and frequency capping ensured users never saw the same video more than once a day and, after seeing one, would enter a sequential chain of videos that delivered 11,900 conversions at a sales value of £750,000 – a 713% year-on- year increase. Furthermore, the campaign video became the seventh most watched YouTube ad of Christmas 2014.