Unilever has upped its digital spend as a result of a successful trial advertising campaign using i2c’s customer insight data ads on sites such as the Mail Online and the Guardian.

The first stages of the six-week research period for the personal giant were deemed such a success that the company is said to be allocating more of its marketing budget to advertising, according to Biz Report.com.

Targeting customers that had purchased Unilever products under review at Sainbury’s stores, data was used from Sainsbury’s Nectar Loyalty card to track offline and online purchases. Results showed that the trial increased sales both off and online, with consumers spending an average ROI of £1.47 ($1.82) for every £1 ($1.24) spent.

Stuart Jeffrey, Unilever’s Shopper Marketing Manager Homecare, told Marketing Week, “We got involved [in the project] because there is an acknowledgement within the business that consumers are shopping online more than ever before and so we wanted to adopt our shopper marketing plan to reflect this shift. Programmatic display seemed a good way to do this.
“The extra benefit here was that we could see how we were changing purchase intent due to the Nectar card data. That was a big sell. We can now go back to the business to show how the investment is working. We haven’t been able to do that to-date to my knowledge.”