How to predict advertising performance in advance: “Perekrestok” and Yandex Surveys

User ratings help you adjust your ads before they're released and give you an clear understanding of how your ads will perform.

“Perekrestok” is a Russian supermarket chain that's managed by X5 Group. As of January 2022, the retail network included 990 supermarkets in 130 Russian cities. The network has a wide target audience: people aged 20–55 who are interested in food, cooking, beauty products, and a healthy lifestyle.

Task

The main purpose of “Perekrestok”'s ad campaigns is to form the audience's brand awareness. The method they use the most is video advertising. It's important for the company that the videos are high-quality and match the consumers' needs.

In the fall of 2021, “Perekrestok” launched campaigns in the Yandex Video Network to advertise the “Black Friday” sale and the Leonardo promotion. The goal was to test the creatives for these two campaigns on the target audience before their release and to evaluate whether the test results match the final user reaction.

Solution

The creatives were tested on the Yandex Surveys platform. The videos were evaluated using 13 criteria, including the basic video elements (for example, characters, video sequence, and music) and user impressions (novelty, usefulness, desire to try, and so on). The test also took into account consumer trends and retail business objectives.

Testing a video for the Leonardo campaign

The video tells customers about the promotion: when they make a purchase for a certain amount of money, they receive stickers that can be exchanged for a 56% discount on Leonardo designer glasses.

Video length: 20 seconds.

Target audience: Women and men all over Russia aged 18 and older.

The creative for the Leonardo campaign received a high rating: 4.39. The video creative tests have shown that certain parameters need to be demonstrated more clearly, including “Makes life easier”, “Entertainment”, and “Saves money”. The video's rating for brand strength was high — this indicator is measured by the time it takes users to recognize the brand while watching the ad. The bright green sections of the timeline show when viewers recognized the brand. A less intense color means that few respondents recognized the brand at that time.

The respondents rated the video using various parameters (such as how interesting the plot is, whether they want to try the product after watching the ad, and whether they got the impression that the promotion helps to save money).

Testing the video for the “Black Friday” campaign

The video was about the upcoming big sale in “Perekrestok” on “Black Friday”.

Video length: 15 seconds.

Target audience: Women and men all over Russia aged 18 and older.

In the video creative test, “Black friday” scored 4.24, which is lower than Leonardo did. The recommendation was to improve the following parameters that are important to consumers: “Entertainment”, “Novelty”, “Plot”, and “Video sequence”.

The brand is clearly visible in the creative: the indicator is 11% higher than in the case of Leonardo. This means that the ad is branded well. Users recognized the “Perekrestok” brand in the first 48% of the video.

In the “Video rating” section, there's a detailed explanation of what parts of the creative require improvement. The ratings of the main parameters are compared to the market benchmarks.

“ We always strive to understand how users perceive the creative, whether they get the right insight, and whether the insight is correctly converted into the ad message. Thanks to Yandex Surveys, now we can evaluate the effectiveness of our ad campaigns as accurately as possible, not only in absolute terms but also relative to the market. The test results confirmed that we were moving in the right direction: Yandex Surveys users gave high ratings to both of our creatives. In general, I'd like to say that Yandex Surveys is a convenient, simple, and effective platform that helps to test hypotheses and choose the best strategy for presenting a certain concept. We're happy to have such a high-tech partner, and we plan to implement more projects that are just as interesting and ambitious. ”

Anton Timofeyev, Digital Manager of the “Perekrestok” retail chain.

Advice to advertisers

“ The continual testing of creatives and videos before the campaign launch allows advertisers to improve the videos so that the required indicators are achieved. Sometimes, you also need to test boardomatics in order to adjust the concept of the video even before it's produced. This will help to create ads that communicate a clear message to the audience, which always improves the end performance. ”

Ekaterina Stepanyuk, Product Evangelist of “Creative tests”, Yandex Surveys.

Results

Both creatives were rated highly by Yandex Surveys users, and these ratings were almost the same as the results of the final ad campaign. The video that was rated higher also had higher performance indicators.

The Leonardo creatives received the highest score on the test (4.39), while the “Black Friday” ones scored slightly lower (4.24). As a result, even with longer videos, the Leonardo VTR was 13.6% higher than that of “Black Friday”. Because of the higher VTR, the cost per completed view in the Leonardo campaign was 14.2% lower.

According to the results of the Brand Lift analysis, the “Black Friday” ad message recall has also increased.

“ Testing creatives in Yandex Surveys has gained well-deserved popularity among retail industry players on the market. With Yandex Surveys, you can better understand how consumers perceive your ads, which elements require improvement, and how to make your ads more effective. ”

Victoria Luzgina, business partner of the Food Retail industry.