Supply Chain challenges stemming from the pandemic were rampant and the automotive category was not spared. Americans craved new vehicles, but shortages in semi-conductor chips created unpredictable delivery dates leaving dealers with barren lots, angry customers, and no indication on when vehicles would arrive. Genesis is a challenger in the luxury automotive space and refused to allow this chaotic scenario to slow their growth.

Within the critical space of in-market shoppers (those likely to purchase a vehicle in the next 3 months) adapting existing systems and processes to counter this industry-wide conundrum required manually adjusting 19 tactics within 101 markets. That would mean breaking out 2000+ tactics comprising 10,000 placements and manually allocating dollars to each on a bi-weekly cadence–a massive drain on work hours! It was unsustainable, prone to delays, and rife with opportunity for error. This wasn’t a quick adjustment and required a wholly-new decisioning algorithm…fast!

With delivery forecasts rendered useless, Genesis and its media agency devised a new algorithm dubbed XLR8R, powered by Chalice AI leveraging The Trade Desk's interoperable platform. This product was devised to automate and incorporate dealer supply down to the model/trim in real-time.

Targeting luxury-minded, in-market car shoppers with higher household incomes is standard protocol for a luxury automaker; however, the infusion of real-time dealer supply empowered XLR8R to prioritize markets with available inventory in real-time and immediately throttle back spend as cars were happily driven off the lot. A huge advantage when Genesis didn’t have the deep pockets of its established competitors.

A benchmark goal to reduce imbalanced spend was set at 5% in XLR8R’s maiden voyage, given the novelty and accelerated development timeline of 8 weeks, and coupled with heavy oversight to ensure that campaign-generated High Value Actions didn’t plummet.

The XLR8R solution powered Genesis video and display messaging programmatically beginning in Q2 of 2022. Eschewing a conservative limited-market test, XLR8R was deployed nationwide across all 101 DMAs. Working with Chalice AI and their unique volume control capabilities with TTD, we built an AI framework to predict potential media spend by market and distribute dollars where there was real revenue potential.

XLR8R expanded the effectiveness of the platform AND investment without incurring hundreds of additional hours of human management. Enabling this capability without the need to create additional tactics, it delivered incremental revenue opportunities for dealers in real-time.

Transformative seems cliché, but from the outset of the XLR8R launch campaign, reporting showed an immediate reversal of the spend imbalances prior to launch. Through year-end, all markets delivered spend in full with less than 1% imbalance… far superior to the campaign benchmark of 5%!

Yes, it saw amazing media-performance benchmark success, but XLR8R also identified and sold stagnant inventory… clearing out dealer lots and improving share in underserved Genesis markets:

• Proven XLR8R Success Against Media KPIs:

o 94% of markets delivered 100% of spend within a 1% margin of error

o High value actions increased by 39%

• XLR8R Cleared Out Genesis Inventory:

o Outpaced YoY sales growth by 10+%

o Genesis monthly sales goals exceeded by 20%

o November and December 2022 were best sales months EVER for Genesis

o The brand ultimately tripled its sales in just two years (while the rest of the auto world kept dealing with supply-chain frustrations)