Microsoft drives awareness and sales for Windows 11

In the past few years, there have been many changes in the personal computer (PC) industry, such as rising costs of materials, high levels of inventory, and decreased consumer demand in Italy (-15% YoY).¹ Also, customer shopping habits are changing as they browse and research products in a shorter period, thus making it even more difficult for PC brands to connect with them at early stages of their decision-making.²

Given these changes to the PC industry, Microsoft wanted to find a creative way to stand out in this competitive category. They turned to Amazon Ads to help them increase their conversion by focusing on upper-funnel marketing. These strategies could help reach potential new customers who are looking for premium priced PCs, a category still showing positive trends in the industry.

Microsoft collaborated with Amazon Ads to develop a tailor-made branding project dedicated to Windows’ unique features by designing a narrative around the #evenmore concept, which helps customers see the different ways they can achieve their goals and dreams with a powerful Windows 11 PC. Ultimately, Microsoft wanted potential customers to know they could experience, “even more ideas, work better, achieve higher gaming performance.”

Amplifying the campaign with a multipronged approach

The #evenmore campaign was amplified by activating several Amazon Ads and Twitch solutions with a real multi-touchpoints approach, such as promoting the campaign during a UEFA Champions League game on Fire TV, livestreaming on Twitch, and using Amazon DSP.

First-party insights and audience capabilities from Amazon helped Microsoft to identify different customer personas, including students and gamers, and have been key to define the right content and Amazon Ads products to reach these audiences.

For example, UEFA Champions League was chosen for their high affinity with tech-savvy users, an audience in line with the Windows 11 target.

Twitch chose and involved two popular Italian streamers (GaBBoDSQ and NanniTwitch), each one representing one of the key personas. During the Twitch livestream, the two streamers showed the possibilities of Windows 11 for both everyday and gaming use with a gameplay session. They also used Twitch Polls to connect with their communities, asking about habits and struggles when using a PC and engaging them in the conversation to support their PC purchase choices.

Analyzing results from across the funnel

The campaign results exceeded the benchmarks on most KPIs across products involved along the funnel. Amazon DSP video reached a video completion rate (VCR) of 75% while VCR for Twitch Premium Video was noteworthy at 85.6%.³ Click-through rate for Fire TV was 0.33%, indicating high engagement among viewers, and return on ad spend for DSP conversion was 39.8 (higher than benchmark) showing how the campaign succeeded also in the lower funnel.⁴

On top of positive single metrics, the path to purchase analysis done using Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) showed the benefits of a full-funnel activation with multiple touchpoints. The conversion rate on customers who saw three ad types was 3x the conversion rate of customers who only saw one, and for customers who saw five ad types, the conversion rate was 5x.⁵