Our initial focus was two-fold – 1) identify and define the precise audience we wanted to target, and 2) determine the best platform to reach this audience.

Demographic research indicates that luxury auto intenders are typically high-income people, 25-55 in age. In 2014, 73% (5.2B) of the global population owned a smartphone. While mobile usage is equivalent to 73% of mankind, it only comprises about 8% of ad spend.

Given the high usage of mobile and the opportunity to advertise on this platform, we chose to leverage mobile platforms for this campaign so that we could target users while they are “on the go” in the vicinity of a dealership.

In order to drive physical action, we needed to connect the emotion of car shopping to a moment that was relevant to the car shopping experience via their mobile phone. Ultimately mobile platform + time + location was our formula.

In the initial phase of the campaign, we launched mobile friendly BMW ads to the audience most inclined to be receptive to our messaging.

Consumers with Samsung and Android devices were highly responsive to the campaign, over-indexing by 13% and 23% respectively for visitation to a dealership. The campaign audience over-indexed for having apps such as Zillow and Credit Karma installed on their phones and visiting business such as Lowe’s Anytime Fitness and Edward Jones, suggesting a skew towards affluence. Additionally, they over-indexed for apps such as ESPN, NBA Game Time, and Spotify which delivered insight into the audience’s interests.

First phase results were used to refine the targeted audience. Throughout the life of the campaign, we continued to optimize based on key learnings of what platforms (mobile/apps) consumers were using and their evolving behavioral patterns when they were shopping for a new car.

To measure success, we leveraged Placed, a research company, to provide accurate online and offline measurement, verifying if our audience visited a dealership after ad exposure. The methodology measures the location of exposed users to calculate visits to BMW dealers. A control audience is then matched to the exposed users and brand lift is calculated between groups.

The results of the 2015 campaign showed success past our initial expectations. From June 1st to December 31st 2015, this campaign generated a 112.8% lift in physical dealer visits, equating to 334,548 incremental visits. According to Placed, the BMW campaign was one of the best performing auto campaigns in 2015 in terms of driving lift in dealership visits.

By using a combination of geo-location and 3rd party data and advertising on mobile platforms, BMW was able to drive significantly increased traffic into their dealerships, improving prospective sales opportunities by over 112%.