Muziker and RTB: The key to success in an era of fierce competition

Muziker, a leading e-shop focused on musical instruments and leisure products, faced the challenge of strengthening its brand in a challenging competitive period. This case study reveals how a strategically planned and meticulously managed RTB campaign not only increased brand awareness but also provided valuable insights for future marketing activities.

The Christmas period is a time of extreme competition in marketing – rising prices for advertising space, overwhelmed audiences and the pressure to use budgets effectively require a well thought out strategy. In this demanding environment, we were given a challenge: to create campaigns for the Czech Republic and Slovakia that would not only increase brand awareness, but also deliver clear and tangible benefits in just 22 days. We chose an RTB campaign as our main tool precisely because it was able to ideally combine the requirements of brand building and achieving measurable results. This solution proved to be both innovative and effective.

The total campaign budget for Slovakia and the Czech Republic amounted to almost €70,000, which allowed us to use a combination of different advertising formats to achieve our goals. As part of the diversification of ad formats, we launched YouTube ads in the Bumper format, TrueView for Reach and TrueView in-stream, which helped us reach the widest audience possible. We also used banners and videos that we purchased through RTB.

The media plans for each country created using the Reach Planner tool looked as follows.The aim of the campaign was to maximize the reach of the target group and increase brand awareness.

The key to success was a precise targeting strategy

For maximum effectiveness and engagement, we used a thoughtful targeting strategy that combined different ways to reach relevant audiences:

• Demographic targeting – the campaign targeted both men and women aged 18 to 44.
• Interest targeting – we focused on users interested in music, cultural events and active leisure.
• Custom targeting – we created our own custom segments that combined keywords, domains and specific interests.
• Contextual targeting – ads were served on sites from specific categories relevant to the target audience.

We also deployed brand protection measures through advanced Brand Safety tools, minimizing the risk of ads appearing in inappropriate contexts.

Within YouTube campaigns, we have excluded inappropriate and kids’ channels to ensure that our ads are only shown on platforms that are relevant and appropriate for our target audience.

As part of the campaign, we also conducted a thorough analysis of the Muziker brand and its position within the market. To get more accurate data, we used the Market Share tool, which helped map the brand’s share and perception among the target group through banner surveys. In both countries, targeting was set to two analysed audience groups. The first group consisted of an audience that had already seen our advertising, while the second group had not seen it before. The difference in responses, known as ‘lift’, became a key indicator of the campaign’s impact on brand awareness and effectiveness.

To analyse this, we used a marketing survey which included the following question presented to the users.

• The results of the Market Share analysis in Slovakia brought very positive conclusions.
• The campaign significantly strengthened the market position of the Muziker brand.
• Among respondents who were not reached by the ads, Muziker accounted for 45.2%, confirming its strong and stable position on the Slovak market.
• Among users who were reached by advertising, the share rose to 51.5%, an increase of 6.3 percentage points. This result clearly confirms the effectiveness of the campaign, its ability to successfully influence the target group and strengthen brand awareness.
• At the same time, the competition was weakened, especially the Sportisimo and Kytary.cz brands, indicating a redirection of customer attention towards Muziker.

• In the Czech Republic, the campaign also significantly strengthened the market position of the Muziker brand.
• Among users who were not reached by the ads, Muziker accounted for 17.7%, which indicates a lower level of brand awareness among this group.
• Among respondents who were reached by the ads, the share rose to 31.6%, an increase of 13.9 percentage points.
• Thus, the Muziker brand in the Czech Republic experienced the most significant growth in market share thanks to our advertising, which confirms its high effectiveness.
• As a result, Muziker achieved the highest brand lift = improved market share due to advertising activities.

This analysis confirmed the efficiency of the campaign and its contribution to increasing brand awareness.

The campaign, which lasted just 22 days, was extremely effective thanks to a series of ongoing optimizations. Our main focus was on key metrics such as effective CPMs, high visibility, achieving the planned reach and maintaining optimal impression frequency.

Based on the ongoing results, we made the following adjustments:

• Thanks to careful optimization and the use of brand safety tools, we achieved placements on prestigious websites in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, such as pluska.sk, topky.sk, idnes.cz and denik.cz.
• We removed ineffective creatives, which led to a better response from the target group.
• In YouTube campaigns, we eliminated channels with high cost and low relevance to ensure higher efficiency.
• We kept the frequency of impressions low to maximize reach without overwhelming users.
• We dynamically shifted budget between targeting channels based on their performance to optimize campaign efficiency.

Increased brand awareness: our advertising campaign increased brand awareness for the Muziker brand in Slovakia by 13.3% among those who saw the ad compared to those who did not. In the Czech Republic, the Muziker campaign had a significant impact – the group that saw the ad showed 78% more interest than those who did not.

The campaigns showed that well thought out RTB strategies have the potential to significantly influence brand perception and interest among target groups. Thanks to this approach, the Muziker brand secured a significant increase in interest in both countries.

Frequency optimization: we not only met the required frequency, but also kept it at a lower level. In Slovakia we planned a frequency of 7.95, the actual value was 6.4.
In the Czech Republic, the plan was 4.3, while the actual frequency was only 3.9.

Positive brand perception: the Market Share analysis showed that users who saw the ad were significantly more likely to associate the Muziker brand with its visual identity.

The first RTB campaign for Muziker was an example of how a well-planned and optimized RTB campaign can significantly boost brand awareness. The aim of the campaign was not only to increase brand recognition in the competitive Christmas period, but also to use the budget effectively and achieve maximum impact on the target audience. The results of the campaign confirmed that RTB ads are a very effective tool for achieving these goals.