The Kaizen effect

As my colleague Ed Perry mentioned in his blog about advertising in tough economic times, our programmatic solution is known as Kaizen. The name is based on the Japanese concept of ‘continuous improvement’ and was chosen deliberately. Our experts use this philosophy day in, day out, to ensure we drive continuous improvements in campaign performance and deliver the results our clients need.

How we apply Kaizen to programmatic campaigns

The definition of Kaizen, according to Google, is “a Japanese business philosophy that focuses on gradually improving productivity and making a work environment more efficient.” Applying this to a programmatic campaigns, we apply scientific testing principles to improve multiple KPIs which leads to effective and efficient campaign outcomes. In other words, great results!

In programmatic campaigns there are many levers we can pull to impact performance. Rather than making lots of changes all at once, we recommend a structured scientific test and learn approach, testing one attribute at a time, so we can gauge exactly what impact different optimisations are having on performance. This approach involves establishing a control, devising a hypothesis for improvement, devising a test, running the test until the results are statistically valid and then rolling out the successful tests and moving onto another test.

Everything we do is informed by data. That means ensuring we devise tests according to what the current performance data is telling us and we ensure we have statistically significant results before drawing conclusions on performance. Don’t just take my word for it, see for yourself the Kaizen effect in action:

In this example Return On Advertising Spend (ROAS) for an ecommerce client improved by 100% month on month thanks to the cumulative impact of multiple optimisations

These results were achieved through a combination of ongoing smaller scale optimisations tests, which included removing under-performing sites from the site list, bid-adjustments based on device, and frequency cap changes. With so many different types of optimisations possible, keeping a testing log is crucial to track what changes were made and when. Being able to reference this log when analysing performance allows us to understand the impact each test optimisation is having. The log is always a good way to keep our clients informed on how their campaigns are evolving and improving over time.

Data, Technology, People

Our approach to programmatic campaign optimisation is a perfect example of our three core pillars of Data, Technology and People working together to achieve success. We now have so much data at our fingertips, and in many cases AI to interpret and optimise campaigns but it’s our people who find the extra insights in this data that makes the difference. Combining the strengths of the programmatic platform with our own proprietary tool equiEDGE, and our experts insights is what enables us to deliver the difference to clients through Kaizen. equiEDGE is our own software that takes away a lot of the leg-work involved with budget management and reporting, leaving us with more time to invest in campaign optimisations. It enables us to truly employ the Kaizen philosophy to our campaigns every day.

Get in touch with us to find out how we can help you achieve your business goals with Kaizen programmatic campaigns.