- Company / Volvo Cars
- Industry / Automotive
- Challenge / Optimize complex Meta campaigns across the full customer journey
Solution / Unified Measurement deep-dive analysis
Results / Up to 5x higher ROAS and 9x greater impact on car sales
Volvo Cars partnered with Ipsos MMA and Meta's Marketing Science team to implement an advanced measurement approach that connected granular campaign tactics to business outcomes. Using our proprietary Unified Measurement methodology, we analyzed how specific Meta strategies impacted brand consideration, search volume, qualified leads, and car sales across Volvo's complex customer journey.
Business Challenge
Understanding Complex Customer Journeys
Volvo recognized that automotive purchase decisions involve extended research periods spanning weeks or months. Potential customers engage in comprehensive comparison shopping, multiple touchpoints, and test drives before committing to a purchase. The brand needed to understand how their sophisticated Meta campaigns were performing across this intricate decision-making process.
Measurement Limitations
Standard marketing mix modeling couldn't provide the granular insights Volvo required. The automotive giant needed to connect specific Meta tactics—creative formats, campaign objectives, duration strategies, and optimization approaches—to meaningful business metrics throughout their conversion funnel.
Volvo sought answers to critical questions: How were their full-funnel campaigns and social-first creatives enhancing customer experiences? Which specific Meta strategies contributed most effectively to brand consideration, search volume, qualified leads, and ultimately, vehicle sales?
Our Approach
Unified Measurement Methodology
Ipsos MMA implemented our proprietary nested method that goes beyond the realm of standard marketing mix modeling deep-dive approaches. Our Unified Measurement framework links strategic marketing mix modeling with granular attribution insights, connecting multiple MMM KPIs to granular media buying and optimization dimensions. This innovative approach enabled analysis of multiple KPIs across funnel stages while maintaining visibility into specific campaign elements and buying decisions.
Marketing mix modeling uses statistical analysis to estimate how different channels and platforms contribute to business growth, allowing businesses to better allocate budgets across channels. However, standard MMM was not entirely sufficient to answer Volvo's questions about how specific Meta activations impact key business metrics, which is why the company leaned on our deep-dive analysis to link granular activations to strategic KPIs.
Collaborative Framework
Working closely with Meta's Marketing Science team, we developed a comprehensive analysis framework that categorized Volvo's Meta investments based on truly optimizable campaign levers. The collaborative approach involved working with the Meta team to categorize investments based on actionable elements such as objectives, branding campaign duration, frequency and reach, as well as creative levers, including creatives that followed Meta best practices versus sub-optimal creatives.
Our collaborative framework examined:
- Campaign objectives and optimization strategies across the funnel
- Brand campaign duration, frequency, and reach parameters
- Creative execution quality and adherence to Meta platform best practices versus sub-optimal creative approaches
- Audience targeting and media buying optimization dimensions
Ipsos MMA then performed deep-dive analyses on these actionable campaign levers to evaluate how different variations impacted performance across the marketing funnel.
Analytical Scope
Our comprehensive study created a holistic view of Meta's campaign performance to uncover deeper insights, both strategic and tactical. The analysis examined how variations in upper-funnel brand strategies, lower-funnel conversion tactics, and creative approaches impacted both brand consideration metrics and return on advertising spend across Volvo's Meta investments. Through this approach, we were able to understand the impact of upper-funnel KPIs, such as brand consideration, search volume and qualified leads, on final car sales.
The study used multiple KPIs representing each stage of the marketing funnel, allowing for evaluation of how different variations in upper-funnel, lower-funnel and creative strategies on Meta impacted brand consideration and ROI.
Results
Creative Excellence Drives Exponential Returns
4.6x Higher ROAS
The analysis revealed that diverse creative content in Meta's highly engaging Reels format that followed platform optimization best practices significantly outperformed content that didn't adhere to recommended guidelines. This finding demonstrates the critical importance of creative quality and platform-specific optimization in driving measurable business results.
Campaign Architecture Optimization
2.3x Higher ROAS
In upper-funnel brand campaigns, utilizing optimal architectural parameters—campaigns running 7+ week duration, 2+ weekly frequency, and 60%+ core audience reach—substantially outperformed campaigns with lower reach, duration, and frequency settings when compared to brand campaigns with lower parameters.
Objective Alignment Maximizes Impact
5x Higher ROAS | 9x Greater Car Sales Impact
In lower-funnel campaigns, optimizing directly toward the purchase objective dramatically outperformed campaigns using alternative optimization targets. This finding validated the importance of aligning campaign optimization strategies with ultimate business objectives.
Client Perspective
Paul Appelqvist Global Head of Media Execution, Volvo Cars
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