The holidays are for family. And for 23andMe, the hope is that all the time spent with family will get people thinking about how genetics influence health.
23andMe is mostly known for its ancestry services, but a new campaign aims to raise awareness about its health services, which can identify potential risks based on genetic makeup.
The campaign features testimonials in which users discovered previously undiagnosed health issues or genetic predispositions through the company’s health services. It will run on linear TV, CTV and YouTube throughout the holiday season and into next year.
Other than some initial tests that ran during the summer, this campaign represents 23andMe’s first real foray into CTV advertising, said CMO Jon Ward. The main goal of this campaign is to drive purchase intent, Ward said.
A new audience
To reach new users, 23andMe and agency Deutsch LA built an entirely new audience pool to target. The companies conducted two surveys polling users about their interest in DNA health screenings and other health products, such as fitness trackers.
Based on the survey results, 23andMe created audience profiles and used those profiles to target lookalike audiences for its TV and CTV ad buys.
“We broke the world into seven segments, and we identified three segments that we thought were appealing for DNA health,” Ward said. The three segments were comprised of consumers who are interested in health and technology and those who buy health-related products like Fitbits.
The company did not use any of its own first-party data derived from its existing user base to create the target audience for this campaign, Ward said, because it was only interested in targeting new users.
The decision to not use first-party data also ensured that no existing user data would leak as a result of being exchanged by partners in the programmatic supply chain – a positive takeaway for a company that has faced criticisms over data security after past leaks, such as an incident in October in which hackers accessed user profiles.
23andMe is purchasing video inventory for this campaign through Tatari’s TV advertising platform.
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Tatari, which has worked with 23andMe on past video campaigns for its Lemonaid Health pharmacy service, also handled campaign optimization.
The linear TV portion of the campaign includes only direct deals, but the CTV portion is being purchased programmatically. Meanwhile, the YouTube inventory is bought through Google’s Performance Max. None of the inventory is being purchased through a direct connection to an SSP.
TV and CTV pros and cons
23andMe has put together at least four ad spots for the campaign, but it’s starting by running just two. The ads feature user-generated content, and were created by agency Los York. Tatari is applying hourly and daily frequency capping to ensure the spots aren’t repetitive.
For linear TV, 23andMe wanted to capitalize on two past trends: its products perform well among consumers buying holiday gifts and the consideration cycle for holiday purchases tends to be shorter than other times of the year.
“There’s a specific dispersion of media spending based on when we think people are going to purchase,” he said. “Holidays are a totally different beast, so we’re trying to align the investment with an almost immediate return.”
23andMe and its agency identified specific placements for its audiences – generally in sports and other event-driven media, Ward said. They then worked with Tatari to target similar programming and other possible placements on CTV.
Despite the buzz around CTV, linear still has many benefits, Ward said. Namely, buyers can be confident they’re getting the inventory and audiences they want and will be placed alongside other high-quality advertisers.
However, while it’s harder to target specific shows on CTV, the channel returns more data, he added. “We can see sales come through and match those IP addresses to where spots ran” to aid in attribution and optimization, he said. Plus, CTV inventory tends to be much less expensive than the premium linear inventory 23andMe usually buys, he added.
CTV’s post-cookie role
Although this is 23andMe’s first real CTV campaign, Ward sees the channel becoming much more important with the ongoing deprecation of third-party cookies, which aren’t really used in CTV.
23andMe is aware where it’s reliant on third-party cookies and has plans to decrease its use of the tech. Online display ads – which are heavily dependent on third-party cookies – aren’t a large part of 23andMe’s budget to begin with, Ward said. And the company is testing using first-party data for its retargeting display campaigns.
For attribution, 23andMe prefers to use post-purchase surveys, regression tests and incrementality testing to gauge performance instead of using third-party cookies to measure the success of campaigns.
“We’re going to be doing less with third-party cookies over time,” Ward said, “and we’re going to continue down the path of video and, specifically, television.”
