How Azadea Used Instagram Reel Ads to Raise Awareness Around Its New Digital Marketplace and Drive Key Performance Metrics

In 2021, lifestyle retail company Azadea Group, which owns and operates more than 40 international franchise concepts across the Middle East and Africa, officially unveiled Azadea.com, its first digital marketplace combining all of its flagship brands in one e-commerce platform.

The recent launch in the region of Instagram Reels, short-form and fully immersive videos that allow users to create fun and engaging content, was the perfect opportunity to check whether Meta’s newest format could help raise awareness around this marketplace, encourage shoppers in the UAE to buy their summer essentials online there, and evaluate the impact of Reel Ads on brand and overall performance metrics during the summer. Indeed, a critical part of Azadea’s relationship and working style with Meta puts measurement at the center of its engagements. So, it became essential to experiment with this new format and see if adding Reel Ads to the media mix would drive better branding and performance metrics for Azadea.

“It’s extremely refreshing to work with partners who put experimentations and measurement at the core. Thanks to Shaheer and the team at Azadea, we were able to showcase the impact of Reels within an existing marketing mix to drive incremental results in top-of-mind awareness, sales, and even app installs,” said Tala Obeidat, Client Partner on Retail, Quick Service Restaurants, and Ghost Kitchens for MENA at Meta.

Here’s what Shaheer Usmani, Head of e-Commerce Marketing & Analytics at Azadea Group, told us about the campaign.

What were the main goals for the campaign that ran on Meta technologies?

We wanted to understand the true incremental business impact of adding Instagram Reel Ads to Azadea’s business-as-usual media mix. Crucially, we needed to evaluate how using Reels Ads could drive better and stronger brand recognition metrics for Azadea.com in the middle of the busy summer season.

Why did you choose Meta technologies, out of many alternatives?

Meta technologies have long been a primary component of Azadea’s marketing channel mix, given their powerful impact on the company’s bottom line. We constantly collaborate with the team at Meta to generate and prove positive ROI and return on ad spend (ROAS) throughout.

Besides, Instagram is a truly unique platform in what it can offer to our community and advertisers; it’s a place that brings entertainment, interests, friends, and family together.

Which solutions or products did you use for this campaign?

Right now, Reels is the best place on Instagram to reach people who don’t follow you yet, and it’s a growing global stage where brands and creators can be discovered by anyone. With Reels positioned to play a major role in the future of short-form content, it is massively important for marketers not to hesitate and be present in this space where their targetable audience already is present – experimentation will go a long way in terms of learnings, but you have to start by being present and active.

So, we set up a campaign specifically focused on Reel Ads combined with Stories placement. The creatives were developed to mimic organic, user-generated content in order not to disrupt the user experience ad and drive a more authentic voice and style.

What were the results of the campaign and did you achieve your goals?

The overall results of the campaign were astounding and proved to be above industry benchmarks. Reel Ads drove +9.7% in ad recall, +2.4% in top-of-mind awareness, and +3.1% in purchase intent on Azadea.com in the UAE market.

Which measurement methods did you use to gain new learnings?

We ran a brand and conversion lift study to measure the incremental impact on ad recall, top-of-mind awareness, and purchase intent.

This methodology uses polling and tech tracking to understand and compare the actions of people in the randomized test and control groups, in order to measure the true impact on the business.