Branding is about building a strong, favorable position for your brand in consumers’ minds.
Its primary objective is to drive visibility and traffic across three key touchpoints: web and mobile, apps, and physical stores. Branding can also amplify the impact of your ASO strategy.
The key is to strike the right balance between organic and paid acquisition. By building brand awareness and strengthening brand preference, branding can also contribute to stronger organic performance over time.
Branding campaigns are typically managed on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis. The KPIs you track will depend on your objectives and campaign type, including engagement rate, clicks, reactions, bounce rate, and more.
Talk to Ad4Screen’s branding experts
Key Channels to Activate for a Branding Campaign
Beyond Social Media
- Programmatic TV
Programmatic TV combines audience targeting and personalized messaging with the automation of TV advertising purchases. It streamlines the buying process, reducing both costs and lead times while limiting the need for direct interaction with TV sales houses.
- DOOH
DOOH (Digital Out-of-Home) refers to digital outdoor advertising. By the end of 2020, it accounted for around 10% of outdoor advertising investment across Europe and 20% in France. DOOH can be activated across a wide range of environments, including shopping centers, streets, and local retail locations such as bakeries and supermarkets.
- Web & Mobile Display
Display and RTB cover web and mobile advertising outside social media and self-attributed networks (SANs), such as Google. These channels offer some of the broadest reach and the widest range of creative formats available today. Campaigns can be activated through traditional media networks or via RTB (real-time bidding), where advertising inventory is purchased dynamically through DSPs.
Take inspiration from Decathlon: make the most of your key commercial moments to drive engagement and increase web, drive-to-store, and in-store traffic.
- Youtube ads
YouTube can support both awareness and consideration objectives, from driving website visits to generating video views. Targeting options include demographics, interests, life events, keywords, placements, in-market audiences, purchase intent, remarketing, first-party data, and lookalike audiences.
With 46 million monthly active users in France, distributed relatively evenly between men and women, YouTube is a particularly powerful channel for branding campaigns.
Take inspiration from Vitalco: leverage YouTube to build brand awareness.
- Spotify ads
Spotify is a relatively newer channel for awareness campaigns, with performance often measured through completed listens. Its targeting capabilities include podcast listeners, language and device/platform, age, lifestyle and real-time context, time of day, location, and interests. The platform also offers significant reach, with 20 million monthly active users in France, with a slight male skew and a strong representation of users aged 25–49, closely followed by those aged 50+.
Social Media Essentials
- Facebook & Instagram
Facebook currently reaches 34 million monthly active users in France, with an approximately even split between men and women. While its audience is relatively mature, users are broadly distributed between those under 25 (41%) and those aged 25–49 (42%).
Its wide range of formats and placements makes it a highly versatile branding channel, including feeds, Stories, in-stream video, Facebook Search, Messenger, and partner mobile apps and websites.
- Snapchat
Snapchat reaches 16.2 million daily active users in France, with a slight female skew and a strong representation of users aged 25–49, followed closely by those under 25. French users spend an average of 41 minutes per day on the platform.
Relevant formats for branding campaigns include Single Video Ads, vertical videos appearing between Stories — Story Ads, combining a cover image and logo with a sequence of videos or images, and AR Lens Ads, which create immersive augmented-reality brand experiences.
- TikTok
With users in France spending an average of 68 minutes per day on the platform, TikTok has become one of the leading channels for reaching younger audiences. It reaches 15 million monthly active users in France, with a predominantly female and under-25 audience.
The platform offers a particularly rich range of branding formats, including TopView and Brand Takeover for maximum visibility, Hashtag Challenges to strengthen brand engagement, and interactive Branded Effects.
Take inspiration from Léocare: build brand awareness through video on TikTok.
Results: +61 million impressions, +233,000 clicks
The majority of LinkedIn users are aged between 25 and 34.
For B2B branding campaigns, objectives can range from awareness and consideration — including website visits, engagement, and video views — to conversion, including lead generation, website conversions, and candidate acquisition.
Creative Mechanics & Formats
In branding campaigns, creative differentiation is critical. Simple, engaging mechanics can encourage participation, while combining timely cultural or commercial moments with interactive experiences helps brands stand out.
Innovative Mechanics
- Instant-win games
- Prize draws
- Countdown campaigns
- Advent calendars
Take inspiration from Cleor: use an advent calendar to grow and enrich your customer database.
Results: 46.87% email open rate, 91% conversion rate, +106,000 participants, +16,000 new opt-ins
- Drive to store
Take inspiration from McDonald’s: drive traffic to partner stores across mobile and desktop while promoting new offers.
Results: +900,000 impressions, +17,000 clicks, +3,600 visits
You can also leverage engaging formats such as scratch cards and HTML5 experiences to create immersive, entertaining, and interactive brand experiences.
Talk to Relatia’s experts to explore the formats and mechanics available
