Category: Blog

This year, Campaign launched the Creative Tech Awards which celebrates the creative tech pioneers. It was designed to honour successful collaborators, celebrate their work and stimulate more great thinking across marketing, advertising and media.

We’re delighted to announce that LoopMe’s campaign with GoodStuff and Yorkshire Tea has been shortlisted in the category ‘Best Use of AI’.

The campaign combined cutting edge AI technology with engaging creative to drive an ad campaign that optimised to the metric that mattered most to Yorkshire Tea – brand awareness.

LoopMe’s in-house creative team created a bespoke rich media unit, where users could zoom and colour in a woodland scene, click through to the campaign landing page and share their creation on social media. This interactive mobile experience complemented Yorkshire Tea’s existing advertising in print media. Supported by this impactful creative, PurchaseLoop was used to optimise to brand metrics using Artificial Intelligence. You can learn more about PurchaseLoop here.

Yorkshire Tea’s campaign exceeded all benchmarks, with engagement rate increased by 131% (compared to benchmark) and almost 10,000 users shared their masterpiece on social media. Most importantly, PurchaseLoop was able to boost brand awareness of Yorkshire Tea’s CSR goals by 50%, all through using Artificial Intelligence.

Other shortlisted in our category include:

• Havas London for ITV News: “Eagle Ai”
• LoopMe for Yorkshire Tea: “How AI delivered for Yorkshire Tea”
• MEC UK for Thames21: “Thames Pulse”
• MullenLowe Profero for Diageo: “Diageo – Malts Bot”
• Zenith for Aviva: “Aviva AI”

The results will be announced on June 12^th at The Tower of London, and the winners will present their campaigns in a post-event scrum on July 5^th. Best of luck to all nominated!

View the full list of all shortlisted campaigns.

We were thrilled to take the prize for ‘Best Use of Video / Rich Media’ at the MOMA awards last night, in partnership with Birra Moretti and Publicis.

The MOMA’s celebrate the best marketing on mobile, looking for evidence of strategic thinking, innovation, effectiveness, tangible results and transparency. We were in a very competitive category, which included campaigns from Havas, Gameloft and News UK and so we’re delighted to have been awarded the top spot.

Congratulations to all the winners – you can view the full list here.

Compelling authenticity with Artificial Intelligence

We worked with Publicis and Birra Moretti to create a rich media and video format that would drive Birra Moretti’s authenticity as an Italian beer brand.

With a wealth of video content that Birra Moretti and Publicis wanted to distribute, LoopMe’s in-house team developed creative with clear calls to action for users to ‘Discover more’ and swipe between the three videos embedded in the rich media unit. This resulted in an impressive 13% engagement rate.

The campaign benefitted from our award-winning PurchaseLoop solution (patent pending), which uses artificial intelligence modelling to optimize campaigns to brand metrics like brand affinity, purchase intent or in this case – authenticity.

In using AI, LoopMe drove 53% higher CTR, increased brand authenticity by 30% and reduced their competitors by 20% – all through effective optimization using artificial intelligence.

We’ve also been shortlisted at The Drum’s Digital Trading Awards in the category ‘Best Use of Video’ for our work with The Story Labs and Microsoft. Keep your fingers crossed!

 98% of retailers are interested in an advertising solution which could drive people into store.

 Say hello to our latest product, PurchaseLoop Foot Traffic!

Our award-winning PurchaseLoop product can now optimize toward in-store foot traffic, improving advertising results in real-time.

The product uses our unique AI intelligence to deliver ads at the moment users are most likely to generate a store visit.

How does this work?

We used 3^rd party location data from the likes of Placed, Factual or adsquare to indentify which users visit a desired location after viewing a mobile ad.

The data associated with these audience profiles (time the ad was served, user online behaviour, user location history, ad type etc) is then incorporated into LoopMe’s AI engine predicted model using machine learning.

This allows us to refine the AI’s targeting and reach more users in the moment that they’re likely to be persuaded to visit a store, as the diagram below shows.

Third party verified

Our own location capabilities are enhanced through integrations with leading data providers. These include Placed, adsquare and Factual.

Concurrent control groups

We believe in transparency. Every PurchaseLoop campaign uses concurrent control groups to demonstrate the average number of visits to your retail outlets, the impact of your standard advertising campaign and the uplift delivered by our AI optimization.

Get in touch to find out more and use PurchaseLoop in your next ad campaign.

LoopMe recently worked with The Story Lab; the entertainment division of Dentsu Aegis, to develop an effective mobile video marketing campaign for the new Microsoft HP Spectre x360 Convertible laptop, a campaign which was the first globally to combine AI brand optimisation in real-time with a programmatic buy.

We were delighted to see that our combined work has been shortlisted at The Drum’s Digital Trading Awards for ‘Best Use of Video’ alongside Amplifi (for William Hill), Engine Media (for Standard Life), Latittude Digital Marketing (For Emaar Properties), Teads (for O2 / War Child), the7stars (for Bulldog Skincare and Current Account Switch Service).

The Drum Digital Trading Awards 2017, recognise and highlight the best examples of digital trading in practice. This years theme is Living the Dream – Programmatic everywhere.

The campaign

The Story Lab teamed up with LoopMe to create a mobile video campaign which would distribute 15 and 30 second teasers of video content to a wide audience, adding scale and driving users to the full-length content which was produced in association with Conde Nast. Most importantly, Microsoft wanted to drive purchase intent for their new HP Spectre x360 laptop.

LoopMe devised a strategy that combined AI to optimise towards the KPIs with programmatic delivery via an Amnet PMP to ensure The Story Lab had visibility on delivery, performance and brand-safety.

To deliver on brand objectives, LoopMe’s award-winning product PurchaseLoop was implemented. PurchaseLoop uses AI modelling to optimise to brand metrics in real-time while the campaign is live. By layering AI, 1st and 3rd party data, PurchaseLoop ensured Microsoft’s creative was delivered to consumers who displayed the highest probability of performing against their brand objectives of increasing purchase intent.

A questionnaire was devised with The Story Lab and Microsoft to effectively assess customer purchase intent which was served to users exposed to the HP Spectre content and a control group. The exposed group was further split out into an exposed with AI optimisation towards positive respondents, and one without, so that the product effectiveness could be fairly assessed.  The campaign also benefitted from work by LoopMe’s in-house creative team who designed bespoke creative to complement the content and increase brand association through further co-branding.

For effective distribution, Amnet overlaid third party audience targeting in three planned strategies: Fashion & Beauty Interested, Tech Enthusiast and In-Market for Laptop / Tablet to ensure that it reached relevant consumers.

The combination of dual targeting using a programmatic PMP and artificial intelligence resulted in impressive results, in a campaign that was unique to the market. The campaign’s CTR rose by over 160% (from exposed to AI optimised), while VCR was boosted by over 15%. The use of PurchaseLoop also increased purchase intent by over 40% – driving consumers closer to the point of purchase.

We’re delighted to see this campaign recognised by the judges at The Digital Trading Awards and look forward to 31^st May when the winners are announced. Best of luck to all shortlisted!

Today, we were announced as one of The Leap 100 2017, a community of the most exciting, fast-growth companies in the UK – launched by London law firm Mishcon de Reya, City A.M. and nominated in partnership with Seven Hills and The Entreprneurs Network.

For the third year running, The Leap 100 will support entrepreneurs with masterclasses and with features in CityAM through regular polls, entrepreneur profiles and expert commentary.

As explained by Kevin Gold in today’s City AM, ‘we’ve chosen 100 companies on the cusp of greatness. They have been selected based on their leadership skills and ambition, as well as the quality of their team and money raised,’ and while this isn’t a definitive list ‘we believe these companies are critical to the future success of our country’.

We’re delighted to have been nominated alongside many household names including Mr and Mrs Smith, Bloom & Wild, Art Finder, Tortilla, MOO and many more! Since our founding in 2012, we’ve grown from strength to strength, with further funding, new hires and award winning products which has bought Artificial Intelligence to brand advertising.

Pick up your copy of CityAM and find the full shortlist here.

Watch this space for more on our #theleap100 experience.

After our recent success at the Digiday Video Awards Europe, we’re delighted to have been shortlisted at The Drum’s MOMAs in the category ‘Best use of rich media / video’ in association with our clients Publicis Media and Birra Moretti.

The MOMA’s celebrate the best marketing on mobile, looking for evidence of strategic thinking, innovation, effectiveness, tangible results and transparency and we’re thrilled to be shortlisted alongside Gameloft, Havas and News UK. You can view the entire MOMA shortlist here.

We worked with Publicis and Birra Moretti to create a rich media and video format that would drive Birra Moretti’s authenticity as an Italian beer brand.

With a wealth of video content that Birra Moretti and Publicis wanted to distribute, LoopMe’s in-house team developed creative with clear calls to action for users to ‘Discover more’ and swipe between the three videos embedded in the rich media unit. This resulted in an impressive 13% engagement rate.

The campaign benefited from PurchaseLoop (patent pending), which uses look-alike artificial intelligence modelling to optimize video and rich media campaigns to brand metrics like brand affinity, purchase intent or in this case – brand authenticity. It resulted in a significant uplift and a more effective advertising solution, as impressions weren’t wasted on those less likely to engage or change their mind.

Well done to all shortlisted and we have our fingers crossed for May 11th!

Learn more about our award-winning PurchaseLoop product.

We open the blog to Michal Szczesny, COO at Artfinder. Artfinder is the art marketplace which connects people to artists and art. Michal will be speaking at our event in London on April 11th. The last few tickets remaining are available here. 

We’re an art company. Or at least, we used to be. That’s not strictly true – Artfinder has always been a tech startup first and foremost, but we’re a tech company that is providing a solution to a very human problem – connecting independent artists directly with customers around the world who would love to buy original art, but either didn’t have access to artists or didn’t know they could afford originals (which are very affordable when you take out the middleman – i.e – the gallery).

We first started investigating AI when we realised that we reached a critical volume of work on the site (we’re at 350,000 pieces now, that’s more than MoMA). A vast majority of those are unique, one-off pieces that cannot be recommended multiple times after they sold. That amount of art is brilliant and exhilarating, but we can also see that for users it could be overwhelming. We’ve always had search filters on the site, plus text search, but to search for a ‘large blue landscape painting for £100 – £200’ and to find 50,000 results isn’t an especially encouraging experience. There seems to be this mindset that once you’ve put in search criteria you have to look at *every single result* to make sure you find the best one – and most people would rather give up than look through 50+ of pages of search results.

So, this left us with the ‘needle in a haystack’ problem – the need to match customers up as quickly as possible with a manageable selection of artworks that they love. For us, this problem is compounded by the ‘I know it when I see it’ mindset, which is that shopping for art is not like shopping for shoes or books, where you usually know what you want or can describe it with words. Art shoppers tend to start from either a complete lack of knowledge about what they want or a with a visual idea which is very difficult to put into words.

Enter Emma

We knew we had to solve the ‘needle in a haystack’ problem in a creative way. And art taste is such a subjective, personal topic – we want our users to feel that Artfinder knows and understands your taste, without ever being judgmental or intimidating, like an art gallery might be.

We began our AI journey with personalised recommendations driven by machine learning and graph database software, Neo4j. From 10,000 artists, 350,000 artworks and 600,000 users we have a huge amount of data to feed into the graph, plus several different levels of relationship between products, artists and users. Users and artists can view or ‘love’ an artwork, ‘follow’ an artist or user, or of course buy an artwork. Those relationships can then be weighted (purchase is stronger than ‘love’ for instance) and we can calculate product recommendations for you based on what similar users have liked.

Those personalised recommendations are great, but obviously you need to have got as far as looking at an artwork on the site before they become useful. In the meantime we had also built an onsite feature called ‘more like this’ – which uses open source visual similarity detection software called LIRE to ‘match’ any artwork on the site to up to 400 others. The same software is used by the police for facial recognition from CCTV cameras. It looks at visual structures on a deeper level than similarity that could be described with text like colour or subject matter.

But we still needed a way to engage users who weren’t even on the site, and who didn’t know what they were looking for beyond a visual stimulus.

Emma fulfilled all of those criteria. Users can tweet any image at her (a photo, an artwork, a selfie) and she will reply with Artfinder artworks that are inspired by your image. She’s a really easy, good fun way to dive into our catalogue without having to even think about what you’re looking for. She’s also, of course, a little bit cheeky – there seems to be this conception that buying a piece of art is a very serious and considered thing, something you might need an advisor for – and what we’re trying to do is shake people out of that.

Buying art can be all of that, if you want it to be, but it can also be as easy as buying a pair of shoes, or a cushion or a pot plant. Art will always be valuable, and will always be something to love and care for, but that doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. Emma is helping us communicate that to our users.

As we go further and further on our machine learning journey, Emma will recommend art you’ll love with (hopefully not too) scary precision, drastically reducing the ‘needle in a haystack’ problem.

We’re pleased to say that last night we added another trophy to our collection!

LoopMe were awarded ‘Best Video Ad Tech Innovation’ for our PurchaseLoop product at the Digiday Video Awards Europe.

The award looked for the best in new or improved video technology innovation, showing ability to deliver, measure or support content, as well as specific video advertising campaigns.

PurchaseLoop (patent pending) was launched in September 2016, and since then we have worked with the world’s top brands to deliver their mobile video campaigns to metrics like purchase intent, brand affinity and footfall.

By layering 1^st and 3^rd party data and AI, PurchaseLoop ensures that video ads are delivered to consumers who display the highest probability of performing against the client’s brand objectives. Typically brands receive uplifts 2 to 3 times higher when using PurchaseLoop optimization compared to a standard campaign. This provides better value for brands and agencies, while also creating a better ad experience for users. Find out more about PurchaseLoop here.

We had a great evening and it was fantastic to celebrate with some of our clients who have championed PurchaseLoop from the beginning! Check out the rest of the winners here.

The Best Ad Tech Innovation trophy now takes pride of place on the reception desk – congratulations to all the winners and here’s to more celebrations in 2017!