Ülker’s video advertising campaign reaches awareness milestones

Ülker is a Turkish multinational food manufacturer based in Istanbul. Founded in 1944 by Sabri and Asım Ülker, the company began as a small bakery and years later grew into one of Turkey’s largest food manufacturers. Pladis, mother company of Ülker, is the 7th biggest confectionary company globally in 2021 according to Candy Industry’s Global Top 100 list. Pladis is also currently the 2nd biggest biscuit and the 7th biggest chocolate manufacturer in the world.

Ülker’s e-commerce sales company, eStar, aims to become a leading e-commerce company in the digital transformation ecosystem both in Turkey and globally. Aware of how the healthcare crisis has accelerated the industry’s digital transformation, eStar wanted to create more data-driven and audience-centric marketing campaigns for Ülker to attract consumers in the right place and at the right time. To achieve this, eStar decided to team up with Criteo and leverage their video advertising solutions.

In partnership with their digital marketing agency Opt.d.com, eStar decided to team up with Criteo and leverage their video advertising solutions.

eStar knew that partnering with Criteo would help develop strategies to engage target audiences while capturing, analyzing, and leveraging first-party data. By working with Criteo, eStar and Opt.d.com aimed to develop a compelling vision and strategic framework for how data-driven marketing will support eStar’s aspirations and drive the success of the launch.

Bringing video advertising into the marketing mix

Research from Criteo’s Shopper Story 2022 report revealed that video is consumers’ preferred online ad format. As such, Ülker decided that they wanted to leverage video advertising in their campaign to attract more consumers in the upper-funnel and, therefore, attract larger audiences.

After launching the campaigns in collaboration with eStar, Ülker began to earn positive results – proving that the upper funnel is as valuable as the lower funnel. The results demonstrated the importance of providing meaningful care for audiences and delivering the content they’re looking for to ultimately achieve conversions.

In addition, since eStar does not have its own ecommerce website, Criteo promoted their products on digital platforms from various retailers to target potential customers, utilize first-party data insights, and increase revenue. Criteo carried out this awareness campaign in collaboration with Getir TR.

“We understand that the value of integrated upper and lower funnel communication is very important for both growth and brand sustainability. This is something that Criteo has successfully executed so we believe it is, and will be, a key part of our digital marketing plans,” shared Gizem Ayyıldız Birlik, Digital Marketing Lead at eStar Global.

Since working with eStar and Ülker, Criteo achieved significant awareness results – including 90% viewability. Partnering with Criteo also helped reach new conversion milestones: Approximately 40,000 new users who clicked on the campaign’s videos were then re-engaged in the company’s lower-funnel conversion campaign.

Following the success of this partnership, Criteo and eStar will continue launching new campaigns together. Given that the fast-moving food and beverages industry is highly competitive, the companies are now planning to launch a mid-funnel campaign to target users who have already been exposed through the awareness campaign.