Background

Experian is a global leader in helping consumers and businesses monitor their credit report history to gain greater control of their financial and purchasing decisions. The company already supports over 100,000 clients in the UK across sectors ranging from financial services to home shopping, telecoms to utilities, media to property.

Objectives

Experian wanted to raise awareness of a 30-day trial of its new credit check offering.

The aim was to:

• Use eBay's reach and advertising capabilities to drive uptake
• Take advantage of strategic ad placement opportunities
• Exploit eBay's detailed knowledge of its user base to research awareness and perception of the Experian brand, the results of which would be used to shape future advertising

Solution

Experian were able to make the most of eBay's powerful combination of targeted advertising and reach to talk to millions of prospective customers who visit the site everyday in the UK. The strategy employed two distinct approaches:

Premium ad placement

Experian became the first company to have co-branded ads placed in the leader board of the My eBay page. This is the main hub through which our buying and selling community view auctions, check the progress of bids and manage all their account activity. It is considered the 'heartland' of eBay and is the page consumers spend most amount of time on. By placing an ad here, you are guaranteed to maximise awareness.

Deep audience insight

Through extensive research on brand awareness and perception amongst shoppers, we worked together to develop more effective ways for Experian to engage eBay's user base.

With our superior data, analytics capabilities and insight into the community of buyers and sellers, we were able to test branded and co-branded awareness of Experian across different audience segments on our UK site.

The research showed that co-branded ads proved much more engaging. These findings provided rich and valuable insights for Experian which it was able to draw on in terms of shaping the creative for its next advertising campaign on the site.