UK online retailer adopts bid management system to optimise web advertising effectiveness

UK online retailer adopts bid management system to optimise web advertising effectiveness

The Hut Group has improved the effectiveness of its online advertising using pay-per-click (PPC) bid optimisation software.

The Hut Group initially purchased OptiMine to support its luxury hair and beauty retail site, lookfantastic.com. As a result of the efficiencies and successful results achieved, the retailer is now planning to adopt the advertising optimisation software across the rest of its online retail portfolio, which includes iwantoneofthose.com and zavvi.com.

Dan Morris, head of paid search at The Hut Group, said: “Our multi-site, multi-brand model sells a broad range of products across key FMCG [fast-moving consumer goods] categories ranging from health and beauty, sports nutrition and gifting to entertainment. Since launching in 2004, the Hut Group has seen rapid growth through development of own-brand sites and, more recently, targeted business acquisitions to now command leading market positions over multiple industries internationally.

Enhancing management analysis

“Due to the fact our brands have high unit sales, strong customer loyalty and significant levels of repeat business, we required a truly scalable, market-leading bid management platform capable of optimisation in aggressive UK and international markets. We also wanted a tool which could be easily managed by our growing team of in-house analysts, and this is exactly what OptiMine has offered us.”

Morris continued: “We selected OptiMine because of its unique competency around making mathematically driven decisions across our portfolio of keywords and sites. Its automated approach to bid management has not only delivered incrementality at greater efficiency, but has also freed the team up to focus on other vital business development functions for us.”

OptiMine delivers highly effective results by using innovative automated machine learning techniques, according to its provider.

Richard Jackson, OptiMine client director, explained: “The system not only creates daily forecasts for the performance of each search advert placement, it also automatically sets optimal bids – in fact, it routinely yields improved returns of 25% or more for a company’s paid search campaigns. Maybe that is why we already have seven companies in production after only six months.”