NAB implements first programmatic digital audio campaign

Fragmented audio and ineffective targeting led National Australia Bank (NAB) to implement one of the first and  largest programmatic digital audio campaigns in Australia.

The innovative campaign follows a report showing 65 per cent of all money spent on advertising in digital media in 2019 will be traded programmatically.

According to Zenith’s Programmatic Marketing Forecasts, programmatic ad spend is also set to grow 19 per cent next year, reaching US$84 billion globally or 62 per cent of digital media expenditure, with Australian programmatic spend to reach US$1.64 billion next year. Locally, programmatic spend has grown from $83.7 million in 2012, to $1.74 billion this year.

Working with REA’s Digital Audio Solution and Mindshare, NAB ran the first targeted programmatic digital audio buy for NAB. The campaign used REA first-party data, and targeted audiences across Spotify, iHeartRadio, HitNetwork and ABC, all in the one buy, a move NAB said brought better efficiencies and more exposure for its marketing dollars on digital radio. 

For the first time, NAB was able to run the same targeting across over four platforms at an average frequency of 4.3, compared to the previous average of 5.6 when booking on single audio platforms. 

The digital audio offering has traditionally been fragmented, with media buyers tending to spend their budget within one platform to create cost efficiencies, or having to split budgets across platforms to generate incremental reach. This can mean a compromise on frequency, due to being unable to frequency cap when running in separate platforms, or compromise on unifying their targeting approach, as each platform offers different types of targeting based on different data sets. 

NAB wanted to find a way to unify their audio buy so that they could target the same audiences across all platforms and ensure they could also cap the frequency to create efficiencies. 

The campaign saw Mindshare and NAB win the Game Changer of The Year award at this year’s Annual REA Excellence awards. 

Minshare managing partner on NAB, Christian Solomon, said everyone involved is immensely proud of the work and credit the win to breaking the mould of a typical digital audio campaign.   

“The courage to try something new paid off. NAB wanted a better way to target audeinces across audio platforms and create efficiencies. Together with REA, Mindshare was able to find a solution that was both innovative and better for the cleint’s business,” Solomon said. 

“With so many brands in the market competing for the attention of an already busy consumer, it’s a constant challenge to cut through. For our teams from Mindshare and NAB, it’s great to be recognised for the efforts doing things a little differently, in order to connect with audiences in new and smarter ways.”

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