Diving into full-funnel solutions from Amazon Ads for Unilever’s Robijn

When it comes to advertising with Amazon Ads, brands that sell in the Amazon store may be inclined to rely only on lower-funnel solutions to drive sales. However, what is the impact of activating a full-funnel marketing strategy on campaign performance? That’s the question Unilever’s Dutch brand Robijn and GroupM Nexus Mindshare & Greenhouse set out to answer when they worked with Amazon Ads.

The objective was to determine if a full-funnel strategy – an approach that uses different advertising solutions to engage customers at various stages of their buying journey – would improve the efficiency of lower-funnel campaigns and lead to a better purchase rate for Robijn, Unilever’s laundry detergent.

When looking into the laundry segment in the Netherlands, new-to-category customers primarily enter through liquid detergent compared to other segments.¹ This meant that Robijn could benefit from promoting their liquid detergent products to attract new customers and capture a larger market share.

Another key insight based on Amazon observations is that combining sponsored ads and Display is found to be more effective in reducing the time it takes for a brand to reach their sales baseline.² This approach works by allowing a brand to reach their target audience through both sponsored ads and Display placements, which increases the likelihood of conversion. Additionally, the use of both ad types facilitates the creation of more precise marketing plans, as a brand can better analyze the performance of each ad type and adjust their strategy accordingly to maximize results.

At the start of 2022, Robijn launched a full-funnel campaign with Amazon Ads to help reach new customers and improve the efficiency of the whole funnel. On Amazon DSP (Amazon.nl and wherever they spend time) the campaign launched with two objectives and two responsive e-commerce creative assets: one for reach, and the other for remarketing. In parallel, Robijn utilized Sponsored Products for three months, reaching shoppers who had looked for their products or similar keywords.

Ultimately, Robijn and GroupM Nexus Mindshare & Greenhouse could measure the impact of upper-funnel tactics in creating tangible downstream effects. With sponsored ads and DSP ads running together, the campaign gathered better results while improving efficiency with multiple touchpoints throughout the customer journey. Here are three notable observations:

• Shoppers who saw all the three ad types (Amazon DSP consideration, Amazon DSP conversion, and Sponsored Products) had the highest purchase rate of 4% vs 0.04% than when running a single ad type.
• Amazon DSP campaigns played a significant role in driving sales, initiating 45% of the total sales. This means that a considerable number of people who made a purchase were initially exposed to a DSP ad.
• Furthermore, out of all the people who bought the product, 85% of them were first introduced to it through a DSP ad. This highlights the effectiveness of Amazon DSP campaigns in helping to reach potential customers and drive sales.

By using the synergy between Sponsored Products and Display running simultaneously, Robijn was able to drive more customers to browse, with 16% of Sponsored Products searches acquired from journeys starting with display campaigns.