Virgin Media gains new subscribers in conversational display ads with Spectrm and AdLingo

“Virgin Media are always looking for new engagement formats, striving to improve how we match our experience to our customer’s intent… We found the perfect way to create all-new interactive display and test some bold new approaches in acquisition. The results were fantastic, and beat our expectations. Really excited to develop the concept further.”

Paul Godfrey | Head of Creative @ Virgin Media

Play Video

35%

conversation completion rate

26%

of people who got recommendation clicked-through to product page

0.29%

engaged conversation rate on mobile app

COMPANY

Virgin Media is a British telecommunications company that provides telephone, tv and internet services in the United Kingdom.

INDUSTRY

Telecommunications

SOLUTIONS USED

AdLingo Ads

Chat with customers in conversational display ads.

Dynamic product feeds

Personalize product recommendations in real-time.

Conversation analytics

Optimize your customer journey with step-by-step funnel data.

Entrypoint manager

Split-test creative and targeting with different bot entrypoints.

The challenge: acquire new customers for high lifetime value broadband plans

Virgin Media wanted to find an innovative and personalized way to acquire new customers for their broadband plans.

Virgin Media had three key challenges to solve:

Banner blindness – how do you grab attention using display ads and meaningfully engage users on third-party websites?
Scaling one to one personalization – how can you scale ad personalization efficiently across multiple sites and apps, for different customer segments?
Complex product offer – how do you help future customers to find the most relevant product for their needs?

The solution: a conversational display ad that personalizes recommendations in real-time

Virgin Media launched the first telco AdLingo campaign in the UK by using Spectrm, in partnership with 22Design.

Using a personalized one to one conversation, Virgin was able to ask users about their broadband usage and needs. Based on their inputs, the AdLingo ad provided a personalized broadband plan recommendation in real-time, all within one advert.

Virgin Media integrated their product feed with Spectrm to dynamically recommend products in chat. They were able to design and optimize their conversation funnels in Spectrm and connect them to AdLingo Ads delivered programmatically via Google DV360.

The results: a deeply engaging ad format that drives qualified traffic to relevant landing pages

This pioneering campaign was successful in deeply engaging potential customers at scale, with 0.29% of impressions on mobile apps led to engaged conversations. Users took the time to interact with the chat assistant– 35% of them answered all of the questions needed to get a personalized broadband recommendation, determined by their real-time responses.

The cost per plan recommendation proved favorable versus Virgin Media targets. Also an high 26% of these users took action on their recommendation by clicking out to the website. Additionally these conversations provided relevant insights on the most common usages and preferences.