EY Fabernovel helps ghd increase sales through AMC insights

A high-end professional hair tool company, ghd, aims to empower women to look and feel beautiful so they can fulfill their every ambition. By 2021, the brand began to think about how to optimize their Amazon Ads media investment.

With the marketing landscape becoming increasingly fragmented and complex, advertisers like ghd want more transparency and flexibility to better understand their marketing performances. Shopping journeys have also become more convoluted with a growing number of touchpoints across multiple channels. Additionally, there are an increasing amount of media choices across Amazon Ads, from placements to targeting strategies and ad formats.

With all of this in mind, ghd sought answers to the following:

• How do we know our budget is optimized?
• How can we maximize my brand’s presence without overbidding?
• What’s the impact of nonbranded, upper-funnel campaigns on the path to conversion?

To help answer these questions, the brand teamed up with EY Fabernovel, a provider of consulting services for digital transformation.

EY Fabernovel leveraged Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC), a holistic Amazon Ads measurement solution, to perform custom analytics and generate cross-media insights. Using AMC, EY Fabernovel developed a plan to help ghd uncover insights to help optimize their cross-channel media spend and obtain audience and operational insights to help improve their campaign performance.

First, to help optimize ghd’s cross-channel media spend, EY Fabernovel conducted a media mix analysis through AMC. They were able to understand the overlap between Amazon DSP and Sponsored Products campaigns, and between brand and performance campaigns. EY Fabernovel also conducted journey assessments to uncover the most effective conversion paths, and understand how many shoppers who connected with Amazon DSP ads would then go on to later search for the brand.

Second, to help improve performance, EY Fabernovel conducted campaign deep dives through AMC. They were able to discern optimal campaign frequency, time frames for reengagement, and days or times of day where ghd had the best performance in terms of brand visibility and purchase volume.

Using AMC, EY Fabernovel was able to compare performance of shopping journeys for audiences exposed only to Amazon DSP, only to Sponsored Products, and exposed to both. Over two months, they found that the conversion rate for audiences who were exposed to both Amazon DSP and Sponsored Products campaigns was the greatest of the three groups: 50% higher than audiences exposed only to Sponsored Products ads. Therefore, EY Fabernovel optimized both Amazon DSP and Sponsored Products campaigns to reach the same audiences.

Using AMC’s journey assessments, EY Fabernovel was also able to uncover patterns in the paths to purchase. This enabled ghd to explore the impact on path to conversion by tactic, such as branded and nonbranded campaigns.

• 86% of conversion paths start with Amazon DSP, validating that this is an important channel for acquisition^1-2
• When looking at first-touch interactions, Amazon DSP audiences had the highest conversion rate among acquisition campaigns (nonbranded targeting)

These insights have helped inform ghd’s advertising strategy. As a result, ghd was able to optimize their budget for 2022 and 2023, and shift the company’s vision to be informed by holistic measurement. Going forward, the brand plans to continue to expand use of AMC.