How Knorr used retail media to drive conversions

Unilever, one of the world's largest consumer goods companies, is not one to rest on its laurels when it comes to driving sales. The company sought a fresh strategy to promote Knorr’s new cooking sauces in Taiwan, particularly through the emerging channel of quick-commerce. 

With Knorr already a trusted name in kitchens worldwide, Unilever aimed to engage new consumers in Taiwan and boost incremental sales. The company also sought deeper audience insights and a more accurate measurement of business results, focusing on conversions rather than relying solely on proxy metrics. 

This case study examines how Knorr, in partnership with The Trade Desk and foodpanda, leveraged retail data to improve campaign performance achieving a 229% increase in add-to-cart rates and an 81% lift in conversions.

Background and objectives

The partnership between The Trade Desk and foodpanda aimed to leverage The Trade Desk’s programmatic advertising technology and foodpanda's first-party retail data to provide more precise and efficient advertising solutions. The specific objectives were to help brands gain deeper insights into their target audiences using customer behaviour data collected by foodpanda, such as purchasing habits and consumption preferences.

In addition, the plan was to utilise The Trade Desk's platform to expand ad coverage across multiple channels on the open internet, including OTT (online TV), music streaming, mobile apps, games, and traditional websites, while using real-time data analysis to ensure ads effectively reach target audiences, boosting brand impact and sales.

Campaign spoke to the Trade Desk's Chris Mooney, GM, data partnerships APAC, to understand how they were able to use foodpanda’s quick-commerce channel to support Unilever in promoting Knorr’s new cooking sauces in Taiwan.

"Our goals themselves represented our challenges," says Mooney. "How could we target new potential consumers in Taiwan, broaden Knorr’s audience, and boost product visibility and sales by using innovative advertising strategies?"

The team was also tasked with finding out how to move beyond traditional advertising metrics to uncover actionable insights into the target audience, as well as focusing on measurable outcomes, such as conversion rates—instead of relying on proxy metrics—to ensure that advertising efforts directly drove business growth.

Strategy and execution

Unilever activated The Trade Desk's retail data solution in partnership with foodpanda to target foodpanda’s customers and measure sales impact effectively. The strategy involved launching a display campaign on the open internet, allowing Unilever to connect with a broader audience while maintaining greater transparency and control compared to traditional 'walled gardens' like social media platforms.

"This approach also enabled access to premium inventory and a trusted ecosystem of partners, ensuring maximum reach and effectiveness for the campaign," says Mooney.

Utilising The Trade Desk’s demand-side platform enabled Unilever to run its campaign programmatically, tapping into a marketplace of premium display inventory and a robust ecosystem of partners. Given the importance of high-quality data and real-world results, Unilever leveraged The Trade Desk’s market-first partnership with foodpanda—Asia’s largest food and grocery delivery platform outside of China—to access rich retail data.

"By utilising foodpanda's retail data, we leveraged transactional signals like past purchases of fresh produce, packaged goods, and active subscriptions to precisely target key audiences," says Mooney. "Additionally, activating foodpanda's sales measurement solution connected ad exposure to actual sales of Knorr products on the app, providing valuable insights into the campaign's impact."

The campaign also created lookalike audiences by utilising Unilever’s first-party data on The Trade Desk’s platform, aiming at consumers similar to existing customers.

To assess the campaign's effectiveness on sales, Unilever activated foodpanda’s sales measurement solution through The Trade Desk. This integration enabled the company to link its ads directly to Knorr product sales on the foodpanda app, providing valuable insights into ad impact. Daily reporting of sales conversion data facilitated informed decision-making during mid-campaign optimisations.

"By employing these strategies, the campaign effectively met and exceeded the key performance indicators while driving measurable business outcomes," adds Mooney.

The results

The campaign proved successful, achieving over 12.9 million impressions, which exceeded Unilever’s goals by more than 70%. Furthermore, the collaboration yielded impressive business outcomes:

• 229% increase in add-to-cart rates
• 81% lift in conversions on the foodpanda platform
• 87% of purchasers were new Knorr buyers

By utilising foodpanda’s audience segments for targeting, Unilever effectively harnessed retail media's potential, engaging consumers based on real purchase data. This approach resulted in lower cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and significantly drove conversions.

The partnership also provided valuable insights, according to Mooney: "The campaign showed that consumers were exposed to ads an average of eight times, and the conversion frequency for Knorr buyers was approximately 9.5 times, indicating that more impressions were necessary for existing buyers to convert.”

Sharon Liu, marketing manager of nutrition at Unilever Taiwan, remarked: “Partnering with The Trade Desk and foodpanda played a crucial role in the success of our recent campaign for Knorr, enabling us to reach new audience segments on the open internet. We were extremely pleased with the significant increases in add-to-cart rates, conversions, and new buyers that the campaign delivered.” 

Overall, Unilever's campaign showcased the effectiveness of reaching new customers on the open internet and driving incremental sales through targeted customer segments and measurement insights.