SNCF Connect, formerly OUI.sncf, is the official French railway distributor and online travel agency. In 2021, it had a business volume of 4.3 billion euros, and was the 3rd largest hotel booking site in terms of the number of buyers.
In January 2022, SNCF grouped all of its services under one brand, SNCF Connect, including its namesake apps and website – a major change among French citizens. To ensure an effective transition and rapid awareness among consumers, the French sustainable mobility giant launched a large communication campaign that included TV, Social, Search, Display, and open web marketing channels.
Outbrain’s ability to constantly innovate and reach highly engaged audiences, as well as the opportunity to accurately measure the impact of brand recall, convinced SNCF Connect’s marketing department to start a campaign with Outbrain’s Click-to-Watch (CTW) ad experience.
CTW offers a premium video experience that respects the user, since it is non-intrusive and 100% chosen by them. The video is launched upon the user’s click (opt-in audience) in a full-screen player with sound on, encouraging attention and memorization of the brand message. The user is thus in perfect conditions of attention to view the content.
The immersive and engaging experience of CTW, with the ability to have a fully branded player including CTA buttons for higher engagement, enabled SNCF Connect to boost awareness and recall. A brand study in collaboration with Nielsen saw the Outbrain campaign achieve:
Outbrain has been a major and essential part of our media mix for many years, especially on our mid- and low-funnel objectives such as traffic generation and conversions. I’m now really impressed with its performance on third-party certified high-funnel branding KPIs, well beyond our expectations. As a result of Outbrain’s great results, we have decided to incorporate them into our next campaign.”
