How First Abu Dhabi Bank helped advance sales goals during Ramadan through a hero takeover campaign

First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB), headquartered in the Emirati capital, stands as the largest financial institution in the UAE. In the past, FAB has taken an innovative approach toward their advertising strategy by leveraging a variety of Amazon Ads solutions and regularly participating in annual tentpole retail events like back-to-school, 11/11, and White Friday.

In 2023, FAB partnered with Amazon Ads on a new Ramadan campaign to spotlight their diverse product range during a period of increased consumer traffic.

As a first step, FAB identified active cardholders on Amazon.ae to better understand their shopping behavior and help identify certain buying trends and preferences. They could then group cardholders based on shared purchasing patterns in an effort to personalize an upcoming campaign for different audience segments across eight types of credit cards.

By referencing first-party insights reports, FAB was also able to identify tentpole events as a key driver for card spends on the Amazon store. Notably, they saw that Ramadan drove, on average, a 2.2x lift in spend on FAB cards.¹ Based on these learnings, FAB launched a campaign using the Amazon Ads hero takeover campaign (H1) placement—which is the most prominent placement on Amazon’s homepage, shown to all shoppers accessing the site.

FAB kicked off the campaign using the motto, “Open your world to more possibilities this Ramadan,” and incorporating the following elements:

1. Engaging H1. At the forefront was the H1, a high-impact visual advertisement at top of the main landing page on Amazon.ae. This was FAB’s first point of contact with shoppers to capture attention and ensure maximum visibility for FAB’s message.
2. Detailed product showcase. After shoppers would click on the H1, they would be directed to FAB’s Store on Amazon.ae, which highlighted the unique features and benefits of each FAB credit card, combining visuals with concise descriptions.
3. Seamless transition to FAB’s website. Concluding the shopper’s journey, a link from the Store page led to FAB’s official website. Here, potential customers could further explore or directly sign up, since they were already familiar with the bank’s offerings.

Through these stages, FAB crafted a cohesive shopper journey, from initial engagement on Amazon.ae to exploring the depth of their credit card offerings and, finally, reaching the bank’s main website.

FAB’s Ramadan campaign set new benchmarks and garnered 2.5 million impressions. The bank’s personalized and creative approach resulted an impressive CTR of 3.53%, which spiked even further to 5% on desktops and tablets, outperforming benchmarks by 3x. At the time, this was the highest-performing H1 campaign on Amazon.ae.²

The campaign also helped drive sales goals. Post-campaign, FAB observed a +41% surge in app sales compared to the previous month. This spike underscores not just the campaign’s immediate influence, but its lasting effect on customer engagement and conversion.³