How Tesco and WPP Media’s data-driven, personalised advertising strategy drove incremental sales, audiences and brand lift

As the holder of one of the richest first-party data sets in the UK, Tesco worked with WPP Media and LiveRamp to shift towards targeted, defined audiences, enhancing sales and key performance metrics.

Client

Tesco

Company Size

330,000 employees
4,500+ stores worldwide
#1 UK Grocery (turnover)

Industry

Grocery
CPG / Consumer Packaged Goods

Collaborators

WPP Media

Use Cases

External Collaboration
Omnichannel Personalisation

The Challenge

As the UK’s leading grocery retailer, Tesco captures 23.6% of UK grocery sales and serves 23 million Clubcard members.

As a ‘champion of customers’, Tesco prioritises in delivering the best possible customer experience, grounded in two core pillars: fair prices and quality food.

Leveraging its position in grocery channel sales, Tesco also partners with numerous CPG brands for co-marketing campaigns. These collaborations promote products aligned with Tesco’s commitment to customer value.

Historically, Tesco and WPP Media employed a broad-reach, family-based digital marketing targeting strategy for their campaigns. However, to drive further growth, they sought a strategic shift towards targeted, defined audiences to enhance sales and key performance metrics.

As the holder of one of the richest first-party data sets in the UK, Tesco worked with WPP Media to plan a truly audience-led approach, from planning to measurement.

(Source: Tesco annual report 2024)

The Solution

Tesco and WPP Media partnered with LiveRamp to leverage Clubcard’s rich first-party data to identify growth opportunities and architect a powerful audience-led strategy.

From LiveRamp’s data collaboration platform, WPP Media strategically crafted and validated nine distinct growth audiences to use across their ‘fair price’ and ‘quality food’ campaigns.

Capitalising on LiveRamp’s extensive digital ecosystem connectivity to a wide range of premium addressable media channels, WPP Media seamlessly activated media for both campaigns across audience-led programmatic display and social media.

Building on a successful test that demonstrated significant scale and performance, Tesco and WPP Media launched a full-scale initiative focused on;

  • Incremental Return on Advertising Spend
  • Customer acquisition metrics
  • Increasing sales uplift across product, creative and sales quantity
  • Increasing basket sizes

We are delighted with the results of our audience-led strategy. The collaboration with LiveRamp and WPP Media allowed us to truly leverage our rich first-party Clubcard data and drive significant incremental returns. The results of £60 iROAS, a 13% increase in basket sizes, and a 9% uplift in 'New to Brand' customers demonstrates the effectiveness of taking a more personalised approach to our campaign, and reinforces our commitment to delivering value to our customers.

Tom Mardon Head of Media and Campaign Planning / Tesco

The Results

Through harnessing LiveRamp’s data collaboration capabilities, Tesco and WPP Media unlocked the true potential of taking this type of audience-led approach.

By leading with strategic creative variations and activating messages programmatically based on audience insights, Tesco was able to provide experiences that resonated and proved successful through LiveRamp’s unprecedented measurement accuracy.

The campaigns were successful in every metric they sought to achieve across the nine defined audience groups;

Strong Media Effectiveness

  • Up to £60 iROAS, demonstrating the efficiencies and profitability of building an audience-led strategy based on precision audience targeting and personalising creative

High Customer Acquisition

  • New to Brand Uplift of up to 9% across the promoted product brand
  • New to Brand sales increase of 4%, converting new customers into loyal buyers

Sales Uplifts

  • Creative uplift of 6% proving the effectiveness of personalising messaging
  • Product uplift of 4% where products were featured, attracting new customers and leading to increased demand

Basket Size Increase

  • Up to 13% increase in basket size

Overall, the campaigns were a resounding success across all areas, effectively converting new customers and increasing spend across existing, directly impacting revenue for both Tesco and partner brands.

Aligning with Tesco’s audience led strategy, working with the LiveRamp platform has enabled the data team at WPP Media to deliver audience first campaigns for Tesco based on first party clubcard behaviour. This data driven approach has delivered positives results increasing basket sizes by 14% and growing sales by 4% to date. Success so far has been a real team effort, and the value of successful collaboration has been priceless!

Leona Bell Director | Data Strategy & Analytics / WPP Media

What’s Next?

If you’re ready to join the world’s most innovative companies and explore what data collaboration can do for you and your partners, LiveRamp is ready to help!

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