Gusbourne Wines Leverages Consent-Based ID to Expand Reach Across Cookieless Environments

Boutique English wines aren’t for everyone. For a purveyor like Gusbourne—a UK-based company known for its high-end sparkling wines—having access to targeted advertising solutions is paramount. 

Unfortunately, with nearly half of all web traffic in the UK now unaddressable due to restrictions on third-party cookies in Safari, Firefox, and Edge, many advertisers are essentially flying blind. Brands throughout the United States and the UK are struggling to adapt, while simultaneously contending with more stringent data privacy regulations that make it difficult to reach audiences across devices and achieve the conversion rates necessary for a positive ROI.

For the past year, Gusbourne has worked with the advertising platform Amobee and ID5, an identity provider for digital advertising, on campaigns designed to expand the company’s reach across both cookie-based and cookieless environments.

During the first campaign phase, which began one year ago, Gusbourne’s agency, Jaywing, worked with Amobee to activate a direct-response display campaign on the Amobee DSP. The strategy was designed with the goal of increasing the sale of Gusbourne wines across the UK. A second phase of the campaign, launched in April 2022, leveraged Amobee’s integration with ID5 to boost campaign results. The approach relied heavily on ID5’s IdentityCloud—a suite of services that enables identification across all digital advertising environments—for cross-device capabilities.

According to Kara Roos, director of customer success at ID5, the campaign helped Gusbourne expand its reach by 76% and achieve a conversion rate of 95%. The company was also able to bring its CPA, or cost per acquisition, down by 23%. What’s more, Gusbourne achieved those results while maintaining total compliance with the GDPR.

“We have a holistic approach to identification. Our identity focus enables us to look at user recognition from every angle and to develop identification methodologies and services that benefit every player operating on the Open Web,” Roos says.

ID5 leverages any type of signal it receives from its publisher partners to identify users, but creates IDs exclusively for those who have given consent to be identified. The company has developed an encryption mechanism to ensure that any data associated with the ID5 ID is accessed only by authorized parties. It also offers a cross-device graph in Europe, which enables buy-side clients to deploy people-based marketing strategies across devices. 

ID5’s graph connects different signals, as well as the ID5 ID, to the same individual or household, so advertisers can reach people—rather than devices—across cookieless environments, with consistent and personalized messages. Roos says all of the signals processed by the graph are obtained with users’ consent, which is how ID5 maintains compliance with the GDPR. 

“We don’t limit ourselves to authenticated traffic only. This allows us to increase addressability for all publishers no matter the size of their authenticated traffic,” Roos says. “It also allows brands to reach and engage with more customers across the web.”

Amobee Director of Client Services Isabelle Bagge says the partnership between her company and ID5 illustrates the advantages of cookieless targeting and how it can positively impact campaign performance, even before third-party cookies fully phase out. 

For Gusbourne, this added up to a campaign that helped the company reach its target audience effectively, and increase conversions at a competitive price. Gusbourne also met its target of increasing overall sales, which allowed the company to activate additional campaigns. 

“What’s exceptional about this campaign is how a boutique brand like Gusbourne can set an example for other larger brands by being innovative with their advertising strategy and leveraging next-generation identity solutions to increase their reach, sales, and awareness,” explains Roos. “In a world where everybody in the industry is preparing for the cookieless future, but ignoring the cookieless present, forward-thinking companies like Amobee stand out from the competition by enabling their clients to reach their audiences at competitive prices across all environments.”