Retail advertisers traditionally focus on driving price and product and are less focused on top and mid-funnel solutions. Convincing retail advertisers to extend their promotions into our trusted, brand-safe digital publishing environments was somewhat challenging.

At Adspace24, the sales division for Media24 News South Africa, we knew that retail advertising accounts for 57% of South Africa’s print advertising pie, and we wanted to offer our partners a seamless digital integration.

Our goal was to maintain our retail spend in print — mainly driven by price and product — while growing spend in our digital publisher channels. To assure retailers that a digital advertising unit can have the same impact in price comparison and driving feet in-store, we had to create a new digital advertising unit, which ensured impactful and eye-catching creative whilst ensuring user engagement and viewability.

To deliver on this goal, Adspace24’s in-house creative team developed a selection of two innovative, engaging, and effective rich media advertising units.  

1. Swipe cards: This rich media ad unit allows seamless integration within our mobile online news channels. It draws the user to engage by in-ad swiping and drives comparative creative, allowing them to browse through impactful, bold messaging that drives price and product education.

2. Catalogue: This rich media ad unit also integrates within our news channel’s mobile environments and drives user interaction. Through the display of multiple thumbnails, the unit allows the user to click on the images for more information and details, similarly driving price and product comparative creative.

We pitched the solution to our retail clients as an integrated solution where we supplemented the effectiveness of their print advertising and offer additional reach with scale through our digital channels, ultimately with the aim to drive more feet in-store.

To ensure additional awareness and traffic, the advertising execution in digital was supported by leveraging our enormous daily users, building dedicated audiences, and retargeting those audiences.

This creative execution took a fresh stance in terms of price and product advertising.

The striking and interactive nature of the innovative rich media executions drove phenomenal results: the rich media units secured 1 million clicks over a six-month period with an average engagement rate of 28.44%.

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