Automated Actions Boosts Criteo ROAS for Dentsu

Dentsu, a full-service media agency, manages Criteo campaigns for a large tech brand across multiple European countries. Dentsu noticed that daily budgets for two product lines could not sustain an always-on strategy. It became vital to have an approach that could improve daily advertising precision. Additionally, the workflow needed to be scalable across regions and different Criteo retailers, ensuring campaigns remained on track with the brand’s return on ad spend (ROAS) goals.

Dentsu hypothesized that intentionally pausing ads during lower-performing hours could efficiently stretch budgets into underserved periods of the day that were being missed. The team decided to set up an A/B test where each product line had one control campaign operate without changes and another that would run during modified hours. To implement a Criteo dayparting strategy, the team turned to Skai’s Automated Actions to automate pausing and activating ads during specific times of the day. This enabled the team to understand which live advertising hours positively impacted performance.

To track the test, the team leveraged Skai Experiments to record results, revealing which hourly settings within Automated Actions were the most effective for key performance metrics. If results deviated, the team could swiftly make adjustments within the Automated Actions settings.

Dentsu utilized insights captured by Experiments to refine Automated Action as the test progressed. By having precise advertising timing during more impactful shopping hours, ROAS on Criteo increased by 294% for laptops and 163% for game consoles.

*Retailers managed in this study: Currys (UK); MediaMartk (DE); Fnac, Boulanger and Darty (FR)

Dentsu is a media company providing creative, media, and agency services in 143 markets across the globe.

Learn more at: https://www.dentsu.com/nl/en