Riyadh: For its World Cup credit card campaign, anb, one of the largest banks in the Middle East, achieved breakthrough results in terms of awareness. It innovated by pushing its campaign on social media channels through OMD’s Omni Custom Audiences, including Snapchat and TikTok for the first time in the country. The precise targeting approached delivered much higher levels of awareness in social media thanks to double-digit improvements in clickthrough and video completion rates.

To improve the performance of anb’s investments in paid social media, OMD adopted a more targeted approach, activating high-value audience segments through its Omni Custom Audiences (OCA) product instead of using the demographic targeting options offered by social platforms. OCA are curated list of audiences, customized exclusively for Omnicom Media Group’s clients. The OCA product is powered by Omni, OMG's marketing orchestration platform.

Fuelled with enriched, GDPR-compliant data sets, OCA improve targeting strategies across digital channels and boost campaign outcomes. OMD used them to build highly bespoke segments ideal for anb’s campaign and objective. They focused on credit card holders, non-credit card holders, frequent travellers and football fans.

The results in terms of Click-Through Rate (CTR) and Video Completion Rate (VCR) were markedly better with OCA than with native targeting options, particularly on Snapchat and TikTok, two highly popular platforms in the Kingdom. The campaign on OCA achieved an 81% increase in CTR and a 23x increase in VCR on TikTok’s native audiences. On Snapchat, the improvement on native audiences was a 22% higher swipe up rate and +18% in VCR.

“Social media is core to our digital marketing, but we wanted a more surgical approach to reaching our audience than what was available on the platforms. As first-party data is a very sensitive issue for banks, the only alternative is quality third-party audience segments. The ability to access them on social media in Saudi Arabia, especially popular platforms like Snapchat and TikTok, is a major step forward,” Bader S. Alboqami, Head of Marketing and Customer Experience at anb, said. “The improvements on native segments with OMD’s OCA are impressive. The double-digit increases in CTR and VCR across all our social channels give us much scope to improve our overall marketing performance.”

“Up until now, standard practice was to run campaigns using social platforms’ native audiences and targeting options. OMG’s premium segments are curated by experienced data scientists who regularly analyze the data to ensure very high match rates and optimal campaign performance,” said George Achkouty, Head of Digital at OMD Saudi Arabia. “The first-in-Saudi test more than confirmed the validity and value of this approach and we expect to see more campaigns being pushed this way through our Omni Custom Audiences product. Looking at the results, this innovative way to target carefully and precisely defined audiences on the most relevant social media channels is bound to rapidly become mainstream, in Saudi and beyond.”

These results beat all expectations. This has motivated the decision to build further on this approach and widen the audience targeting strategy using quality custom segments, built on contextual, demographic, behavioral and geographical data. It will improve the reach, affinity and conversions of the bank’s paid social and programmatic campaigns.

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About anb

anb was established in 1979, by Royal Decree M/38, taking over the existing operations of Arab Bank in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. anb, a Saudi listed joint stock company, now ranks amongst the 10-15 largest banks in the Middle East. Headquartered in the capital city of Riyadh, the Bank is supported by regional offices in Jeddah and Khobar, and has a branch in London.

anb is a universal commercial bank catering for the diverse needs of its Corporate and Retail clients. To service a large and varied customer base which exceeds 2 million, the Bank has an extensive distribution network, with 237 premises spanning over the Kingdom. These include 129 branches, 10 sales centers, 79 remittance centers (TeleMoney), 13 SME centers, and 1 corporate branch.

To keep pace with the digital transformation and create an experience that customers are genuinely looking for, anb offers a wide range of self-service financial solutions through 5 fully-fledged digital branches. Recognizing the need to serve customers in a convenient and timely manner, the Bank also has around 1,160 ATMs, 290 Corporate Cash Deposit Machines and 36,670 point-of-sale terminals, in addition to advanced mobile banking application and a state-of-the-art, award-winning phone center.

Arab National Bank - a Saudi joint stock co. - paid up capital SR. 15,000 Million and is regulated and supervised by Saudi Central Bank

About OMD:

OMD, a global media network part of the Omnicom Media Group (OMG), is the largest and most innovative marketing performance company in the world, with more than 10,000 employees in 100 markets serving many of the most successful and well-known global brands. With $192 million in new business gains, OMG MENA saw the biggest growth in the region in 2021, with AlUla, Saudi F1 Grand Prix, Dakar Rallye, Saudi Vision 2030, Riyadh Art, ROSHN, EXPO 2020 and OSN as wins for OMD.

In the 2022 edition of the Network Diagnostics report by RECMA (Research Company Evaluating the Media Agency Industry), OMD has been named the best performing global media network overall, earning its highest-ever scores. With global billings estimated at $23.8 bn, COMvergence ranked OMD as the world’s largest media network in 2020 and 2021.

In awards terms, OMD was the Most medaled Media Network at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity in 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022, and the highest-ranking media agency network in the 2020 and 2021 editions of the Effie Effectiveness Index. OMD’s performance in creativity and effectiveness was also confirmed the MENA region at the Dubai Lynx Festival, where OMD was named the Media Network of the Year in 2019, and the MENA Effies, as the 2018 Most Effective Media Agency of the Year.

https://www.omd.com/

FOR MORE DETAILS, CONTACT:
Felicity Stokes, Marketing and Communications Lead
E-mail: felicity.stokes@omnicommediagroup.com