The Surround Sound Approach for Ovo Energy
Challenge
The Brief
OVO tasked us with delivering an ongoing campaign which would be innovative, reactive to changes in the market, and able to deal with new products and services throughout the year.

Approach
We suggested OVO Energy consider a fully integrated campaign across both Programmatic and PPC. The logic being we could tie up the user purchasing funnel and drive high quality traffic to the OVO website. In order to achieve this, we used DoubleClick Search which enabled us to view all paid activity under one, integrated method of conversion tracking.
Creative Strategy
To achieve the objective of reacting dynamically to changes in the market, we advised that OVO develop a range of dynamic ads. OVO have since produced three sets of Dynamic creatives, moved from flash to HTML5, produced varied creatives based on qualified audience analysis and taken up innovative creative design for in-app and mobile PAYG campaign.
Brand Awareness
To ensure we targeted relevant audiences, we identified sites which OVO's audience visited and negotiated private deals with national publishers. Different demographics were targeted in order to maximise brand awareness across the UK (everyone needs an energy provider!). To measure the impact of these private deals, we adopted a new reporting strategy with separate metrics to measure performance.
Remarketing
Our remarketing strategy focused on integrating Paid Search, Display and YouTube activity, with several highlights:
- Users who watched a YouTube video were remarketed to via Programmatic.
- Granular Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs) allowed us to re-target previous visitors with highly specific messaging based on the customer's search query.
- We used query strings on generic PPC campaigns to build remarketing lists which consisted of users who had searched for specific USPs (e.g Price, or Green Energy). We then used programmatic to target these users with relevant creative ads.
Holistic Attribution
After the implementation of DoubleClick Search (DS), we streamlined OVO's approach to attribution, drawing all of their online channel data into DS, including Natural Search data, Google Analytics linking and click trackers. This approach afforded us a combined view of OVO's digital activity, enabling effective spend across all channels.
Uniquely, data pulled in also included unpaid sources of interactions, including Native, Twitter and Facebook. By having access to all online data, we were able to analyse all media channels and identify conversion paths for different OVO products.
Insights
A key aspect of our role has been relaying insights back to OVO, including information on:
- Audience Segmentation & tailored targeting recommendations
- Conversion Funnel Analysis & drop-off reduction
- Accurate creative messaging testing using split cookie pools to ensure clinical results
- Prospective new business opportunities driven by search volume data
The Results
Through hands-on management and optimisation, we managed to ensure a linear relationship between OVO's Programmatic spend and conversions:
- 78% increase in conversions
- 33% increase in overall click-through rate
- 275% increase in clicks
- 149% increase in brand awareness for the main target demographic
Results
Increase in conversions
Increase in overall click through rate
Increase in clicks
Increase in brand awareness for the main target demographic.
Keys to success
- A hands-on management approach and optimisation, built a linear relationship between OVO's programmatic spend and conversion rates
- Used DoubleClick search to view all paid activity under one, integrated method of conversion tracking
- Deployed a re-marketing strategy approach focused on integrating Paid Search, Display and YouTube activity