Lowe's capitalized on browser ads and buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) apps for a mobile-forward campaign promoting its e-commerce site.
Objective:
Lowe's is a leading American retail company that specializes in home improvement. The company operates via retail stores and its e-commerce website in the United States.
COVID-19 rapidly accelerated the adoption of e-commerce in the U.S., as indicated by the 32 percent spike in e-commerce sales from Q1 to Q2 of 2020. This figure reflected the fact that people were indoors and wished to shop using the web in a safe and easy manner.
Customers also started shopping for home improvement tools and products online, as indicated by the fact that online orders and pick-up in-store accounted for 60 percent of Lowe's orders as of March 2022.
Lowe's wanted to extend its reach to these newly interested online shoppers and boost sales, especially during the festive seasons.
The Lowe's campaign objectives were to:
Target Audience:
Lowe's wanted to target its ads to a wide range of audiences since it offers a broad portfolio of home improvement goods and tools. The target audiences included:
The specific demographics targeted were as follows:
The specific device types targeted were:
Creative Strategy:
Media Strategy
Tiles are a unique ad format by VEVE that act as a quick access icon (brand logo) that captures users' attention before they plunge into their search journeys.
Tiles provides convenience to high-intent users to navigate to their desired websites without typing or searching. This advertising channel is well-suited to appealing to premium customers with high intent to explore or purchase.
Since Lowe's was a leader in its category and had high brand recall value, Tiles were an excellent fit for the campaign.
Tiles for Lowe's were placed across popular mobile browsers, desktop browsers, search engines, and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) apps.
Creative Strategy for Tile Placements
Context:
This was the first time Lowe's partnered with VEVE. Lowe's wanted to acquire new customers and drive incremental sales during the festive season by advertising beyond the traditional channels of search and social media. The retailer wanted to reach unique users with a high purchase intent while eliminating competition from other leading brands investing heavily in search.
Overall Campaign Execution:
The campaign started with the objective of boosting sales during the festive season, but the strong conversion rate of 2.8 percent delivered during this period ensured that the campaign remained live for the following months from January to July.
The campaign was continuously optimized and scaled by adding inventory across different channels.
The campaign started by placing Lowe's Tiles on mobile with placements on original equipment manufacturer browsers and BNPL apps. It was scaled further by adding inventory across different placements on desktop.
To test the impact of the campaign on a desktop browser, Lowe's Tiles were first placed on Opera desktop. Sales generated via Opera desktop proved that desktop browsers were driving high cart values and conversions. The team then decided to place Lowe's Tiles on browsers providing a higher reach and a premium audience, including Microsoft Edge browsers and on MSN.com.
VEVE used its machine learning algorithms to identify unique users engaging with the brand via its ad formats daily, and VEVE's auto-optimization algorithm was able to retarget these frequent visitors across the best-performing cities, states, and devices, leading to an increase in retention rates.
With these advertising placements (that is, Samsung internet browser, BNPL apps, Opera browser, Microsoft Edge, and MSN.com), Lowe's was able to reach 217 million customers across mobile and desktop. The overall campaign budget was $763,143 out of which 57 percent was allocated towards mobile, while 43 percent of the budget allocated to desktop.
Mobile Execution:
According to recent research, the time spent on the internet worldwide has risen to six hours and 58 minutes, 53.5 percent of which is spent on mobile. This trend has created multiple engagement touchpoints within mobile devices. With a view toward capitalizing on this development, Lowe's Tiles were placed on the Samsung internet browser and BNPL apps on mobile phones.
Mobile Reach
The Samsung internet browser has the third-highest market share in the mobile browser market while the market share of BNPL for e-commerce payments in the U.S. is doubling year to year, growing from 1 percent in 2019 to 4 percent in 2021. The global transaction value of BNPL in e-commerce was $34 billion in 2019, reached $120 billion in 2021, and is forecasted to reach $576 billion by 2026. These trends made the Samsung internet browser and BNPL applications the perfect means to drive incremental reach beyond search and social media and acquire users by advertising directly on mobile devices.
Mobile Targeting
BNPL apps allow users to make purchases as their spending capacity increases due to fresh lines of credit. BNPL apps allow users to split payments into monthly or weekly interest-free Easy Monthly Instalments (EMI). This method gives customers instant gratification since they can purchase a product even though they may not be able to afford the entire product or service in one go. The payment schedule and easy expense tracking on BNPL apps made it a perfect touchpoint for Lowe's to advertise on since it sells a variety of large ticket items.
Additionally, Lowe's Tiles that were placed on high-engagement touchpoints on mobile helped nudge the users and drive them conveniently to the brand's website without switching to any other application or browser.
Between November 2021 to July 2022, the Lowe's campaign:
