The Challenge
Performics Romania, the agency managing Banca Comercială Română’s (BCR) personal loan campaign, faced the challenge of effectively promoting a highly competitive loan offer within a limited six-month window. To maximize impact, they needed a sophisticated strategy to reach the right bank clients—those actively considering a personal loan—while optimizing engagement across multiple media channels.
Performics structured the campaign around four key audience layers:
- Anonymous users (first-time campaign interactions)
- Suspects (website visitors showing interest in loans)
- Prospects (users entering the banking app to apply)
- Clients (successful loan applicants)
Reaching the anonymous layer was particularly challenging. Performics needed a data-driven approach that could extend beyond limited first-party data and effectively capture in-market loan seekers.
The Solution
Performics leveraged its deep expertise in audience segmentation and data-driven advertising to design a dual-strategy approach, testing two key targeting methods:
- Digiseg audience segments: Anonymous bank clients categorized by relevant interests (banking-loans, auto, education, tech).
- Contextual targeting: Bank clients reached through contextual signals.
Recognizing the need for precise and scalable targeting, Performics identified Digiseg as the ideal tool for reaching bank clients most likely to be in-market for a personal loan. Digiseg’s real-world household demographics and probabilistic targeting enabled Performics to enhance campaign reach beyond BCR’s primary first-party audience pools.
The campaign was structured into two separate line items:
- Digiseg (bank clients with loan-relevant characteristics)
- Contextual (bank clients based on content relevance)
This segmentation allowed Performics to track, measure, and compare performance across different targeting strategies, ensuring the most effective approach.
“We tested two untracked data strategies to extend our reach—contextual and household data. Both added value, but Digiseg stood out for driving stronger engagement throughout the campaign, demonstrating an effective approach for BCR Romania, in targeting consumers seeking personal loans.” – Andreea Ivanov, Programmatic Lead, Performics
Results
Performics’ strategic approach, powered by Digiseg’s audience insights, significantly outperformed contextual targeting across key engagement metrics:
- Engagement Rate: Digiseg audiences delivered an engagement rate of 137%, meaning that for every 100 impressions, the campaign generated 137 unique engagement events—such as video pauses, sound toggles, or full-screen activations. This suggests users interacted with the ad more than once per impression on average. In comparison, contextual segments delivered a significantly lower engagement rate of 51%, highlighting the stronger interaction levels driven by Digiseg’s targeting. Among impressions that generated at least one engagement, Digiseg audiences averaged 2.63 engagement events per engaging impression, compared to just 1 for contextual segments.
- Video Completion Rate: Digiseg delivered a. 58% completion rate, outperforming contextual segments, that only achieved 51%.
By identifying and integrating Digiseg’s data into their campaign strategy, Performics demonstrated their expertise in audience-first media planning. Their ability to select the right targeting tools and optimize performance helped BCR Romania successfully engage bank clients in the market for personal loans—delivering superior results compared to traditional contextual targeting methods.