Asahi grows online sales by 4x with UID2 omnichannel strategy

Business objective 

Leveraging an omnichannel strategy to drive online sales of a new product 

As Japan’s largest beer producer, Asahi’s brews have become popular around the globe. Still, the company knows there’s no room for complacency in its competitive market. So, when it ran a campaign in Hong Kong for its new Dry Crystal beer — a lower-alcohol version of its popular Asahi Super Dry — the company was keen to optimise its campaign performance and drive online sales. 

Having previously relied on display and social media channels for its campaigns, Asahi wanted to try a programmatic omnichannel approach to help increase its reach to consumers across Hong Kong. But the team’s efforts were limited by its lack of first-party data, which sits mainly with the retailers selling its beer. 
 
To overcome this, Asahi and its agency, Dentsu Hong Kong, collaborated with The Trade Desk to develop an advertising strategy aimed at growing its first-party data and reaching its loyal customers interested in a lighter beer alternative across channels to help drive online sales of both its new beer product and its portfolio of other brands. 
 

Solution 

Using Unified ID 2.0 across channels to reach potential customers 

Asahi ran an omnichannel campaign on our demand-side platform, tapping into our extensive selection of premium display, high-impact, video, connected TV, over-the-top video, audio, and programmatic digital out-of-home inventory. 

To help grow its first-party data, Asahi used our Unified ID 2.0 (UID2) solution, which creates unique, pseudonymous identifiers from hashed email addresses or phone numbers. This approach enabled Asahi to more effectively retarget UID2 users in a privacy-conscious way. Activating UID2 targeting helped increase the video completion rate by 13% and reduced the cost per completed view by 34% when compared to prospecting targeting strategies. 

Adopting an omnichannel strategy also yielded strong results, including a 76% increase in click-through rate when users were exposed to its ads on three or more channels compared to one channel. This underscores the campaign’s effectiveness in capturing consumer attention across multiple touchpoints. 

Most importantly, the campaign drove a significant number of online sales of both its Dry Crystal beer and across Asahi’s portfolio of brands. The team saw a 4x increase in total sales in Asahi’s flagship store on the HKTVmall online shopping platform in only three weeks post-campaign launch. 

These results — particularly the strong conversion data — show how using an omnichannel strategy powered by first-party data can help drive tangible business results. Asahi plans to build on this highly successful campaign by continuing to grow its first-party data and activating it across multiple channels to generate sales across its portfolio of products globally. 

Want to learn how you can grow online sales by using our UID2 solution and an omnichannel approach? Contact us or reach out to your account manager at The Trade Desk today.