Kevel ad server drives 478% ROAS for MC

What MC Wanted

MC is the retail business unit of Sonae Group focused on food, groceries, beauty, health, and wellness. Multinational company Sonae is best known for managing a diverse portfolio of businesses in retail, financial services, technology, real estate, and telecommunications, with operations across 62 countries on every continent.

MC is Sonae’s food and groceries retail market leader in Portugal and operates various brands, namely Continente, the largest supermarket chain in Portugal. Continente commands approximately 30% market share in the Portuguese grocery market. With over 4.5 million families in Cartão Continente, the loyalty program, which has a monthly app usage of over 1.5 million clients, the team at MC recognized a significant opportunity to leverage their extensive customer knowledge.

From this opportunity, MC launched Endless, their new brand for retail media operation which was created as a commitment and value proposition to brands and media agencies. When the Endless team set out to enhance their retail media capabilities, they knew they needed an ad tech solution that could support their ambitions. As the pioneering retail media operator in the Portuguese market, Endless partnered with Cartão Continente and Kevel to offer solutions that deliver greater efficiency in advertising investment decisions, all supported by real customer behavior insights.

The Endless team recognized the value of self-serve, forecasting, and targeting capabilities up front, and they aimed to revolutionize their approach to retail media through advanced segmentation, new ad placements, and their data-rich loyalty program.

“We came to the realization that we needed a CDP solution and an ad server, and Kevel having that stack available within a single company was critical in [our] decision,” said Carlos Paulo, Head of Endless, Retail Media Solutions.

Within six months of signing with Kevel, MC launched 160 ad placements across its loyalty card app, marking the beginning of their retail media operation.

The Challenge

Before partnering with Kevel, MC’s few existing ad placements were manually managed on their website, restricting their scalability and flexibility. Despite their significant market presence and extensive customer data from various assets, MC was unable to fully leverage their rich knowledge about customers for advanced targeting or deeper insights into consumer behavior.

In 2023, MC began developing Endless, the new MC brand for retail media, to reinforce their commitment and value proposition to brands and media agencies. With ambitions to build a formidable retail media network, the Endless team sought an ad tech partner that could provide advanced segmentation, innovative ad placements, and seamless integration with their existing data infrastructure. Their team was also interested in a partner who could serve as a strategic collaborator, offering consultancy and expertise to help them effectively grow their retail media business.

“It has been useful to not have strictly technical conversations with [Kevel]...sharing how the business is evolving at large has derived a lot of value that transcends pure technology.” – Carlos Paulo, Head of Endless, Retail Media Solutions

The Solution

MC leveraged Kevel’s comprehensive suite of ad APIs to transform their retail media capabilities, and in just six months MC was able to:

• Build a retail media team. MC established a dedicated team from the ground up to manage and drive their retail media strategy.
• Launch with 160 ad placements. These placements included a diverse range of ad formats, including display, native, product listing ads, and internal promotions, across Sonae websites Continente and ZU, plus the Cartão Continente loyalty app. Since their initial launch, the MC team has also continued to explore new ad formats and placements, further enhancing their retail media offerings.
• Target ads with machine learning-based segments. MC chose Kevel Audience as their customer data platform, syncing two years of historical in-store and online loyalty purchases to create powerful retail media segments based on demographic, behavioral, and ML-based propensity models. Audience also empowered MC to bring their own unique customer segment they’d already built, eliminating concerns over lost investments.
• Maximize ad effectiveness. With Kevel, the MC team was able to sync a product catalog of over 2 million products to enable relevant targeting for their product listing ads.
• Enable ROPO attribution. MC integrated their online and in-store sales feed to enable research online, purchase offline (ROPO) attribution, enhancing their ability to measure the true impact of their campaigns on both online and offline sales.
• Launch the retail media brand Endless. With Kevel taking care of the tech build, the MC team could focus more energy on their ENDLESS® launch, allowing them to promote their retail media portfolio and capabilities to advertisers within months.
• Built stronger connections with consumers. By leveraging the knowledge MC has on consumer habits, and through segmented campaigns, the team at Endless built a more relevant user experience for consumers.

Kevel gave MC a one-stop solution for effectively scaling their ad placements and optimizing their existing data. Kevel Audience was particularly crucial, according to Endless’ Head of ENDLESS® Product Strategy & Analytics, Ana Cardoso:

“Being a physical grocery store, we are not a purely online player. We have deep knowledge and consumer insights through our loyalty program and our own segmentations,” said Ana Cardoso. “It was very important for us to find a solution that has the ability to bring that on and mix [it all] together with our first-party data, so we can have the richest information about the client.”

The Impact: What Kevel Delivered

Tech That Matches MC’s Scale

Kevel’s robust tech stack is built to manage MC’s diverse, multi brand ad business, supporting a catalog of over 2M products synced to Kevel Core, on top of helping MC track:

• 320M+ impressions
• 4M+ Monthly Tracked Users (MTU) in Kevel Audience
• 360M+ events in Kevel Audience

Kevel also supports a range of monetization strategies, including lottery and auction models, tenancy-based agreements, and performance-based deals on CPM and CPC. This flexibility has been instrumental in helping MC scale and optimize their retail media business, demonstrating the success of MC’s robust first-party data when integrated with Kevel infrastructure.

Flexible APIs

Kevel’s API-based solution empowered the MC team to adapt their retail media strategy dynamically, keeping pace with the ever-changing landscape of retail media. This flexibility was crucial for MC who wanted to avoid rigid and inflexible solutions, but rather wanted the ability to seamlessly adjust to different ad formats and channels.

“Being an API-based solution gave us the ability to evolve through time because retail media is in a very fluid context right now. Even from an ad server perspective, the ability to adapt to whatever formats and channels we want to launch in the future…that is definitely a plus. We wouldn’t be stuck with a solution that give[s] us little room for adaptation.”
– Carlos Paulo, Head of ENDLESS, Retail Media Solutions

Dynamic Ad Formats

Kevel supported MC’s desire to launch multiple ad formats, including:

• Sponsored Listings
• Display ads
• Native ads
• Product Listing ads
• Internal Promotions

By launching 160 ad placements across their websites and mobile app, MC brings advertisers a variety of engaging ad formats, enhancing ad performance and customer engagement.

A Comprehensive CDP

By leveraging Kevel Audience as their CDP, MC streamlined their ad tech stack while still preserving existing investments, like previously built segments. With Kevel Audience, MC synchronized two years of historical in-store and online loyalty purchases, integrating approximately 2 million products into Kevel Catalog via Kevel Audience. This integration enabled behavioral segmentation and helped the MC team create 100+ new segments in Kevel Audience.

Kevel Audience also allows MC to customize ads in real-time using their extensive knowledge about their customers, enhancing ad relevance and performance, leading to an impressive 478% ROAS as of April 2024.

Close Collaboration

Kevel’s local Portuguese-speaking team provided the MC team with invaluable support for both technical and strategic needs. “We asked for help, for advice, for [Kevel’s] opinion about everything,” said Ana Cardoso. “Being able to collaborate and have [Kevel’s] insights about the main topics of the business or strategic advice, was very important. That was one of the most valuable aspects during the set up of our business.”

With Kevel-powered ad infrastructure, MC saw an impressive 478% ROAS in 2024.

What’s Next?

MC’s strategic initiatives, including the launch of Endless -- the new MC brand for retail media business -- combined with upcoming expansions with Kevel, position the multi brand company for significant strides in their ad business. MC is integrating Kevel Forecast, boosting their predictive capabilities, allowing for more optimized ad performance. They also introduced Video Ads within Continente’s loyalty app and will eventually roll out a self-serve platform to grant advertisers greater autonomy and flexibility.

These initiatives underscore MC’s enthusiastic commitment to innovation and growth, with the goal of making Endless a global reference in the retail media space.