As a leading Singapore company that delivers world-class communications, entertainment, and digital solutions, StarHub knows the importance of connecting with customers. In a fiercely competitive market, they found themselves challenged to keep up by finding net-new customers across their various product lines–mobile, home, and business solutions–whilst also driving better media efficiencies and effectiveness.
With each product having its own nuances in audience, KPIs, and business goals, StarHub needed to approach its marketing and advertising strategies in a holistic way, yet treat each product as its own business.
StarHub was looking for a partner that could deliver measurable business outcomes at scale as well as granularity and accuracy of audience insights. To deliver results, StarHub required internet-scale first-party data and AI capabilities to access unique audience insights, both to plan and activate media campaigns–and that’s where Quantcast came in.
The focus of the partnership between StarHub, their media agency Carat, and Quantcast worked to achieve several goals:
- Deliver greater efficiency across StarHub’s entire media planning and activation model by moving away from third-party data, using first-party data instead to accurately segment audiences.
- Help StarHub find high-value prospects and drive new customer sign-ups through the use of first-party data and AI technology to connect media planning and activation.
- Improve customer acquisition efficiency across all lines of StarHub’s business by creating custom algorithms for each product and campaign.
Using AI and machine learning technology to bring in more net-new customers
In transforming their approach to campaign planning and activation, Carat had to make several changes internally, including upskilling their teams to become more technical and interwoven into StarHub’s business units, individually and as a whole.
The Carat team worked with Quantcast and StarHub to tag StarHub’s entire website, and products were tagged with Quantcast pixels, which allowed all stakeholders to better understand behaviours of the different audiences who were visiting and converting on the StarHub website.
Previously, StarHub was using pre-defined audience segments, which didn’t provide granular insight into the true behaviour of those users, or whether they were still in-market. By using Quantcast Measure, we were able to create a real-time stream of data that recognised digital behavioural patterns and helped StarHub understand the online journey of every visitor or new customer. The strategy here was to optimise reach for individuals, rather than pre-defined audience segments.
By changing the way StarHub approached its digital advertising, Quantcast was able to deliver greater efficiencies across StarHub’s entire media planning and activation model by moving away from third-party data and using first-party data to accurately segment audiences, while also finding high-value prospects and improving customer acquisition efficiency.
Delivering true prospects and covering the entire marketing funnel
To increase advertising efficiency further and drive new customers for StarHub, Quantcast used StarHub’s DMP to inform the suppression of ad exposure to existing customers, and instead only engaged users who had not been to the StarHub website for the past 30 days.
Underpinning this first-party data-driven approach to reaching new customers, Quantcast utilised a combination of awareness (video and rich media formats) and performance solutions to engage with StarHub’s highly-focused audiences. This allowed StarHub to achieve its dual objectives of brand awareness and online conversions at a greatly reduced cost per acquisition (CPA).
Ran Too, Senior Manager of Brand and Marketing Communications at StarHub, is very satisfied with the results: “Our goal was to reduce the cost of acquiring new customers and Quantcast has by far been one of the best performing platforms in driving conversions across the B2C and B2B sectors for StarHub. Quantcast has constantly delivered against our campaign goals, with the cost per acquisition (CPA) delivering 2x more effective results when compared to other ad tech providers.”
Within 6 months, StarHub reports that they achieved:
- 81% lower CPA across all ‘enterprise business group’ solutions
- 57% lower CPA across all ‘entertainment and ‘smart life’ solutions
- 38% lower CPA across all ‘mobile’ solutions
- 21% new customers on average across all lines of business
Trilateral partnership drives results
According to Ran, “Working with Carat and Quantcast changed the way we approach digital advertising in our business, helping us to become more efficient with our strategies and drive actual results that matter.”
Through partnering with Quantcast, StarHub and Carat were able to develop long-term strategies and plans with:
- Preparations for the cookieless future: In leveraging Quantcast, the StarHub marketing team can now exclusively use their own first-party data to reach and engage their desired audiences.
- A focus on longer-term brand building: Informed by actionable takeaways that Carat regularly puts together using the Quantcast Platform’s audience planner tool, StarHub has also successfully shifted their focus to creating longer-term brand and performance targeting strategies, resulting in better brand perception and overall conversions.
- The power of customer insights: Having access to live, first-party data insights about StarHub’s audience through the Quantcast Platform allows the Carat team to keep the client informed and educated around key media buying cycles, and tailor strategies based on changing goals and customer behaviour.
The team effort has paid off. Evonne Ching, Associate Client Partner at Carat, states: “Carat has a strong partnership with Quantcast and continues to leverage its technology to deliver effective performance strategies across StarHub’s digital campaigns. This includes leveraging the audience and campaign insights that are unique to the Quantcast Platform. The strong collaboration between both teams has led to significant growth in ramping up acquisitions, which in turn has contributed to positive growth for the StarHub business.”
The results speak for themselves. This successful partnership has influenced even more productivity and value across the company and changed the way StarHub does business. The marketing team now exclusively uses their own first-party data, including evidence and insights from real-time conversions, to target their messaging at all their available audiences and existing customers.
Learn more
Check out another successful collaboration with Quantcast, Havas Media Australia, and Kia Motors by reading this recent blog post or watching our NOVA session, “The Advertising Triangle.” You can also see our case studies to learn how other top brands around the world are using the Quantcast Platform.