Case Study: OTTO

OTTO Standardizes on Innervate to Scale Efficiently, Drive Performance, and Promote Innovation

Based in Hamburg, OTTO is one of the largest German e-commerce platforms. With a turnover of 3.5 billion Euros, OTTO generates one third of total sales via its very own OTTO app with 64% of all sales derived from its app and other mobile devices.

In recent years, OTTO has proven that a “modern” spirit can drive success. “Modern” for OTTO means to encourage curiosity, promote innovation, and provide appropriate frameworks for growth. A trendsetter in online retail, OTTO
is constantly on the lookout for new technology to deliver efficiency and improved performance.

While creative automation efficiencies are important, “performance is the primary goal” of display campaigns, explained Alexander Brandt, Online Marketing Manager at OTTO. In his role at OTTO, Brandt is responsible for paid marketing channels in the German market, including retargeting. He also participates in marketing technology projects at OTTO from the functional side.

BEFORE INNERVATE - COMPLEXITY STIFLED INNOVATION

Recently, OTTO moved to increase its investment in data-driven programmatic advertising and to reduce investment in traditional Insertion Order media buys. With more than 5,000 different creatives in-market, OTTO needed to automate further in order to scale – all without increasing staff size.

“While solutions we looked at before RevJet [Innervate] were product-dynamic, creative couldn’t...(easily) be adapted and individualized by the marketing manager,” commented Brandt. Additional challenges stemmed from OTTO’s enormous product catalog. Brandt cited “matching images, headlines, and marketing messages optimally” as a major concern."

In this experiment the OTTO team wanted to test the impact of having 2 to 4 products on the display banner. In addition to the number of products, the experiment also tests whether clothing or home goods were better performers

ULTIMATELY 4 CLOTHING PRODUCTS WAS THE
WINNER AND OBSERVED A 339% CREATIVE BOOST.

THE DECISION 

In seeking a Digital CX platform, OTTO identified several key criteria in selecting a partner. Those criteria included: an open and customizable interface that “harmonized with their existing tech stack,” support for existing advertising use cases, a self-service UI with creative building and reporting functionality, and artificial intelligence capabilities. After evaluating a handful of technology providers, OTTO chose Innervate because it offered the best overall solution to address OTTO’s requirements along with accessible and knowledgeable support.

IMAGE vs NO IMAGE

This retargeting experiment tests a variety of display ads that either do not contain a product image, or has an image that includes generic products.

The last challenger ad has 4 dynamic products. Each of these ads were winning variants from previous tests, so we’re testing the best performing ads against each other to find the highest performing winner.

THE PATH TO SELF-SERVICE CREATIVE MANAGEMENT ON INNERVATE

The OTTO marketing team boasts in-house expertise in ad and marketing technology, ad operations, media planning, creative production, and performance analysis. In selecting a new technology platform, the team sought a partner to train them once then scale adoption across their organization in a self-service manner. As part of the onboarding process, OTTO implemented a proof of concept with a small core team to test the basic functions of Innervate. With regular online training and Innervate's library of support documentation, OTTO stood up a new advertising campaign (including new creative concepts) in just 35 business days. Although they look forward to exploring Innervate's more advanced features, OTTO already realizes “new ways of thinking and campaign structures made possible by RevJet [Innervate],” according to Brandt.

LIFE ON INNERVATE: MORE VISIBILITY, LESS FRICTION, LOWER COSTS, AND BETTER PERFORMANCE

Brandt summarizes standardizing on Innervate as “A milestone in display advertising that creates room for new ideas.” Team members using Innervate at OTTO are most impressed by the flexibility in creative automation, campaign orchestration, and reporting. On Innervate, the time from idea to impression has become much shorter with less communicative friction between creative agencies and freelancers. Innervate enabled OTTO to realize its goal of increasing the volume of programmatic campaigns, all while delivering insight into creative optimization and user-based personalization down to the SKU-level -- without additional headcount.

“For the first time we were able to gain deeper insights into which [product recommendations] in combination [with the number] of products displayed pays best for conversion,” said Brandt. “We were able to gain insights into which creative concepts best pay off, and how different KPIs are [achieved] in respective periods of time.”