Ancestry’s Evolving Content Strategy in a Programmatic WorldRiddhi Goradia, Director, Display and Content MarketingAugust 22, 2016

AgendaI. Introduction

II. Programmatic Challenges

III. Questions Confronting Us

IV. Old Ad Experience- DR style

V. New Experience- Content Based Messaging

VI. Learnings

VII. Looking Ahead

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Ancestry IntroductionAncestry is the global leader in family history research and consumer genomics. We are dedicated to helping everyone discover, preserve and share their family history.●10 Brands, presence in 9 markets●Core family history business has 2.4 MM paying subscribers

>18 Billion historical records >80 Million family trees containing >8 Billion profiles

●DNA business is up and coming, and over 2MM people have taken the test

Wealth of First-Party Data for Targeting

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●Technology platforms brought onboard to tap into unique 1st party data for programmatic purposes

●Opportunity for incredible depth and detail of targeting, including targeting based on:

Days remaining in Trial

Nodes on customer tree

Search counts and Record Types

Content Views and Deny Activity

Login Frequency

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Despite Rich Data, Programmatic Performance Faced Challenges

●Programmatic presence included using common-place retargeting techniques

●Hyper-targeted segments followed site visitors everywhere

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Diminishing Returns were Becoming Evident

●Lower-quality inventory, ‘Viewability’ issues

●‘Banner blindness’ and ad blocking limited click rates ●CTR is a key influencer of CPC, lower CTR means higher CPC which affects CPA negatively

●View based measurement not validated in macro models

●Business unclear of value; lower budgets6

Cost per Acquisition

(CPA)

Cost per Click(CPC)

Conversion Rate

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Questions Confronting Us

●Are we using technology market to consumers in a smart way?

●Are we being too literal in our messaging by bombarding users with exactly what they saw on our website?

●Old way of messaging focusing on 14-day Free Trial assumed a certain familiarity with the brand

●Potentially excluded users who were not in the mind-set of exploring their family history

●Banner focused only

Old Direct Response Ad Experience

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Content-Based Messaging drove an Improved Ad Experience●Move away from 14-day

Free Trial opened things up in terms of targeting

●“Last Names” theme resonates with EVERYONE; inspirational

●Creative iterations included driving messaging to content on our blog

●Move to native platforms

Improved Ad Experience, Improved Economics

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●Broader audience did impacted Conversion rates

●But economics were still positive●Subscriber growth nearly doubled

●Acquisition Cost reduced 23%

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Subscriber Growth & Acquisition Cost Decline

Month/Year

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Content-Based Messaging Extended to Omni-Channel Presence

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●Content wins were pushed to Paid Social

●CRM testing gardened block buster response

●Strong response in Google Sponsored Content and text ads

●Upcoming test in Digital video

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Content + More Native Platforms = Better Engagement & Story Telling

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Axis Title

Disp

lay

Med

ia S

pend

Programmatic

CPA buys

Endemic buys

TestingNative

Programmatic

CPA buys

Endemic buys

Testing

Native Programmatic

TestingNative

Learnings

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●Content Based Messaging meant that we transition messaging from demand capture to ‘inspire’

●Old approach limited ability to build brand. New approach enabled it

● Improved metrics allow us to expand into distribution channels and targeting types previously unprofitable

●New focus is on learning how to best create end to end ‘inspire’ experiences

Looking Ahead..

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●Programmatic video●What does success look like? ●How do brands measure it given that by its nature, it is essentially disruptive to

the consumer experience?

●Leveraging first party data at scale

●When will programmatic native garner the scale to make it a bigger part of media buys? ●What type of publisher participation does this require?

Thank You!

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