Building brand equity that lifted every other channel.
A leading athleisure brand operating across 5 markets needed more than another performance push. Their lower-funnel channels were plateauing because demand wasn't being created upstream. We architected a full-funnel programmatic strategy on DV360 - combining PG, PMP, CTV and Open Exchange - and proved, through attribution and incrementality work, that brand investment was the unlock for performance ROI.
The challenge
Search and social ROAS had flatlined for 3 quarters. Branded query volume was static. The brand was buying conversions from people who already knew them - and running out of that audience.
The hypothesis
Investing in upper-funnel programmatic - particularly on premium and CTV inventory - would expand the addressable audience and create downstream demand that compounds into performance channel efficiency.
The proof
Brand Lift Studies, geo-incrementality holdouts and BigQuery-based path-to-conversion analysis - triangulating causal impact on awareness, consideration and ROAS across all 5 markets.
Activation architecture
We structured the buy across four inventory tiers in DV360, each with a distinct role in the funnel. Open Exchange wasn't the default - it was the efficiency layer underneath deliberately curated PG, PMP and CTV deals.
Programmatic Guaranteed (PG)
Reserved 1×1 deals on premium publisher inventory in each market for hero CTV and high-impact display - guaranteed share-of-voice during launch flights, frequency-capped at 4/week per household.
Private Marketplace (PMP)
Curated PMP deals with category-relevant publishers (sport, lifestyle, health & wellness). Auction-based pricing with first-look access, brand-safety pre-bid filters via IAS, and contextual targeting on GumGum.
Connected TV (CTV)
Cross-publisher CTV via Disney+, Samsung Ads and major broadcaster BVOD apps. Audience extension from linear TV using ACR data, plus household-level frequency management across CTV and desktop/mobile.
Open Exchange (OMP)
Always-on prospecting and retargeting with custom bidding algorithms in DV360 - bid multipliers tied to viewability, attention metrics (Adelaide AU score) and predicted on-site engagement.
Audience strategy
- 1P CRM segments onboarded via LiveRamp into DV360 Audience Center
- Lookalikes built off high-LTV purchasers, modelled in BigQuery ML
- Affinity + in-market overlays (sport, running, yoga, athleisure intenders)
- Suppression of recent purchasers and active loyalty members
- Sequential messaging: awareness → consideration → conversion creative based on exposure history
Measurement & attribution
The measurement stack was designed to answer one question with confidence: did brand spend cause the lift in performance ROI, or just correlate with it?
- Brand Lift Studies (Kantar + Google) running in parallel on each major flight, with control/exposed cells per market
- MTA (multi-touch attribution) layered on top of Google's data-driven attribution in GA4, with custom path-to-conversion analysis in BigQuery
- Geo-based incrementality holdouts in 2 of 5 markets to validate causal lift on branded search and direct traffic
- Cross-channel halo modelling: branded search query volume, direct sessions and assisted conversions tracked against programmatic impression delivery by DMA
- Adelaide attention scoring + IAS viewability stitched into DV360 Authorized Buyers reporting via Ads Data Hub
The outcome
Across the 5 markets, aided awareness lifted +22 pts and consideration +14 pts (Kantar, control vs. exposed). Branded search query volume grew 38% in markets with the highest CTV pressure. Geo-holdouts confirmed causal lift: matched markets exposed to the full programmatic stack delivered +31% ROAS on Search and Paid Social, and blended CPA fell 27% over the campaign window. The brand reallocated 18% of pure-performance budget into upper-funnel programmatic the following quarter.