- How the brand structured the journey: top-funnel branding, first-party data, and personalised creatives.
- What changed in practice: more relevant messaging, weekly tweaks, and a focus on real engagement.
- Your takeaway: a simple, usable playbook to apply personalization and ongoing optimization.
Segment: Premium food-sector B2C e-commerce
Journey: Branding at the top of the funnel → behavioural data via Cookie Pools → dynamic creatives
Period analysed: 8 months
Key results: CTR +166%, CPC −43%, Clicks +38%
Confidentiality: anonymized case due to client privacy
Context and Challenge
The brand needed to increase qualified traffic while maintaining media efficiency. The growth plan required strengthening its presence at the top and middle of the funnel — boosting awareness and interest without inflating costs.
> The practical goal was to generate more sessions with a real likelihood of engagement and purchase, keeping a balanced relationship between reach, frequency, and cost per click.
Main pain points identified:
- Low differentiation of messages by profile and stage of the journey.
- CPC volatility across high-reach inventories.
- Difficulty sustaining a competitive CTR in awareness campaigns.
Strategy Adopted
The operation was structured using the BMS self-service platform, combining three complementary fronts.
Phase 1: Purposeful Reach
Branding campaigns focused on coverage growth and brand recall within premium inventories.
Key definitions: target frequency per user, recency as a prioritization variable, and sensory-driven creatives aligned with the brand’s premium positioning.
Phase 2: Qualified Audiences
Activation of Cookie Pools to build clusters of users with a higher likelihood of interaction.
Segmentation considered behavioural signals such as content categories, URL terms, and browsing patterns.
Expected outcome: reduce audience dispersion and prepare the ground for more specific messaging.
Phase 3: Personalization at Scale
Implementation of dynamic banners featuring product recommendations tailored to each user’s detected interests.
Creatives began “pulling” relevant items or categories for each user, connecting intent and offer in real time.
How BMS Enhanced the Operation
- Data as the engine: Cookie Pools fuelled the creation of behavioural clusters, enabling segmentation focused on click probability and traffic quality.
- Living creative: dynamic banners adapted titles, visuals, and categories based on user signals — delivering the right message at the right time.
- Continuous optimization: real-time metrics allowed rapid bid, budget, whitelist, and frequency-cap adjustments. Each week, hypotheses were tested, validated, or discarded frictionlessly.
Results Over 8 Months
Client statement:
“Even with a focus on upper and mid-funnel, the increase in traffic was clear. The performance keeps us motivated to continue with BMS.”
The CTR increase occurred alongside a CPC reduction — proof that personalization improved efficiency, not just volume.
> The growth in clicks came with higher traffic quality, reflected in the decrease of low-engagement clicks after the first testing cycles.
Why It Worked
- Personalization guided the journey: from first contact to qualified click, the experience matched each user’s real interests.
- Data shortened the path: behavioural signals connected intent to creative relevance, reducing waste.
- Rapid iteration preserved efficiency: weekly adjustments in bids, frequency, and messaging prevented fatigue and stabilized CPC performance.
What Changed in Practice
- Messaging: creatives began alternating between product benefits and category-based recommendations.
- Delivery: frequency recalibrated per cluster and recency window — less unproductive exposure, more meaningful reach.
- Inventory: progressive prioritization of domains and formats with stronger CTR-to-CPC ratios, while keeping room for controlled testing.
Key Learnings
- When dynamic creatives meet qualified audiences, even upper-funnel campaigns can perform.
- Data pools sustain CTR growth without inflating CPC — as long as testing cadence remains consistent.
- The right message at the right time outperforms simply expanding reach.
Replication Checklist
- Map intent signals and build clusters based on behavioural data.
- Define creative hypotheses per funnel stage and run A/B tests with a fixed analysis window.
- Control frequency and recency per cluster to avoid fatigue.
- Review inventory and formats weekly, focusing on CTR, CPC, and post-click quality.
- Log and promote learnings to feed the next testing round.
Conclusion
This case demonstrates how a simple, well-executed combination can change the game: qualified audiences, adaptive messaging, and real-time optimization.
Personalization made upper- and mid-funnel efforts more efficient and paved the way for sustained click growth at lower cost.
Want to explore a similar strategy — with full autonomy and no minimum investment? Get in touch with the BMS team.
