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Panta Rhei

Panta Rhei

How we increased advertising reach by 52% with the same budget, created the first book trailer in history, and increased the turnover of the entire bookstore – all thanks to AI creatives.

Segment

Books

Services

Google Ads, Meta Ads, Creative Advertising, Graphics

Panta Rhei is a network of 61 brick-and-mortar bookstores and an online store with a range of up to 217,000 books. The client was looking for options to increase brand awareness while creatively presenting the latest book titles.

Thanks to their trust in us, they eventually became the first Dexfinity client to fully utilise the latest AI tools for creatives creation.

An A/B test determined the direction of investment into marketing

At the very beginning of testing AI creatives, we offered the client a free A/B creatives test. We believed that by using AI, we could create more engaging graphics and use prompts to generate original images that would not be found in any stock photo library.

In addition to the initially delivered banners for the client’s Halloween campaign, we quickly created a set of 5 different static AI powered creatives for selected books. We then promoted them in an A/B test.

We only had a few days to test the campaign, so we divided the budget evenly between 5 books (micro campaigns) and A/B tested the AI powered creative from our workshop (right) and the standard creative – banners from the client Panta Rhei (left).

The results were excellent. AI powered creatives compared to “classic” creatives:

achieved +102% click-through rate (CTR);
attracted twice the number of users to the website;
saved -50% cost of acquiring a customer on the website -> only €0.36 for “AI creative” vs. €0.74 for “classic creative” (source: META).

"The campaign surprised us with its great reach and increased sales. Given its short duration, its main benefit was that it encouraged us and the client to pursue further campaigns with AI powered creatives. This signalled the start of our joint journey towards unique AI powered branding."

Ondrej Lipták

COO, Partner, Dexfinity

Creatives that draw you deep into the storyline of the book

A previous client test convinced us to fully test the AI-enriched creatives. As a next test we selected a new release by Dominik Dán. For this mini campaign we had a budget of approximately €750 at our disposal, which we again divided in half between the client’s “traditionally made creative” (image below left) and our AI-powered creative (image below right).

What were the results?

The AI creative had 51% higher overall reach (in target audience) than the client’s traditional creative. Thanks to the higher interaction with the audience, the AI banners had a 28% lower CPM (cost per thousand impressions).

Viewers found the storytelling of the AI banners very engaging. This was also illustrated by the total click-through numbers. People clicked on the ad, wanting to see and know what it’s all about. The platform algorithms recognised this and therefore displayed it to a wider audience of customers – even at a lower cost per click and CPM. The AI-powered creative won this test as well.

The AI creative also resulted in more overall purchases and thus won the A/B test even on the hard metrics of CTR and ROAS.

The first AI-powered video book trailers in history

Just as a painter is excited by using a new colour palette and brush to create, the new possibilities of AI tools for video creation inspired us to create the first AI Video trailer for a book. Our next challenge was to produce a campaign where a video was produced without the use of a single camera, while faithfully portraying the story of the book and immersing the viewer in the narrative.

The goal was to:

differentiate our partner from competitors who sell the same product (books);
engage the user and attract them to books that had the potential to become bestsellers;
achieve more reach for the same budget while connecting the brand with quality video content to support brand building.

The client selected 5 books (Dune, Yrsa, Firefly Lane, The Stardust Thief, Escape to the Countryside) that could appeal to a wide audience of new potential customers. Accordingly, the selection included Dune, the film adaptation of which had just been released in cinemas, and Firefly Lane, which was new on Netflix.

Awareness for “a couple of bob”

From the beginning, we kind of suspected that the videos wouldn’t have an immediate effect on sales, but we expected lots from them building awareness. And we weren’t wrong.

We only paid €0.81 for every 1,000 views.
And for 1,000 “completed” viewings of the trailer, we paid an average of only €8.3 per ThruPlay – playback of 15 seconds or more.
These AI trailers had the most successful numbers ever.

The book Rings on the Water by Dominik Dán

Armed with data and experience from previous videos, we embarked on an even bolder experiment: creating a “cinematic” video trailer for Dominik Dán’s latest book for the client using AI tools.

"Working on AI trailers taught me how to connect creative ideas with technical AI tools, from a script scribbled on a piece of paper to the final cut. I admit, there were situations where I thought I couldn't do it. But I didn't give up! This challenge pushed me forward and improved my handling of AI tools. The result is a book trailer that is worth it!"

Nicole Štulajterová

AI Video creatives Pro

For this campaign, we decided to do another interesting test. We launched the video trailer in two campaigns with different goals (bidding strategies). The first one aimed to show the ad to people who are “buyers” and direct them to the online store. The second campaign aimed to maximise the reach and viewing of the video trailer for the book – ThruPlays – by playing at least 15 seconds of the video. See the resulting video trailer.

How did it turn out?

The campaign that was focused on ThruPlays brought a much higher number of quality impressions and reach. The cost per ThruPlay was only 0.4 cents! In comparison, the cost per ThruPlay for a campaign targeting conversions was 7.5x more expensive (3 cents).

"Setting the right campaign objective is key. If you want your video to have the most impact, aim for thruplays or impressions. If you want it to generate sales, aim for maximising conversions. The algorithm will find the right audience based on that."

Ondrej Lipták

COO, Partner, Dexfinity

When we ranked all Panta Rhei campaigns over the past few years, the price for ThruPlays on Dominik Dán was the lowest out of them all. This is thanks to the combination of excellent creatives and an appropriate topic (bestseller).

The Meta algorithm test was confirmed. The ThruPlay campaign had, as expected, many times greater reach and lower CPMs, but the sales campaign reached people who were more likely to buy, so in effect a different audience. The most obvious difference was in the comparison of CTR (click-through rate). The campaign targeted at shoppers had a CTR of 0.85% compared to 0.11% in the ThruPlay campaign. The “Sales campaign” thus provided many more clicks through to the online store.

The project in numbers

Results

+52%

Increased advertising reach

We managed to achieve this increase in campaign reach through a A/B test of classic and AI creatives. The client gained +52% in performance for the same budget.

€0.40

Price for ThruPlay (video views lasting 15 seconds and more)

We achieved this historic record with AI trailers for Dominik Dán. 1,000 views of a video trailer of at least 15 seconds cost us only €4.

+15%

Increased sales

In summary, our A/B tests of AI creatives were able to bring the client 15% more sales with the same budget compared to classic creatives.

The Holy Grail of a successful campaign

Behind the true success of any campaign is the combination of a good product and its communication – marketing. That’s when the money invested in marketing has the biggest impact. In the meantime, of course, there is a lot of important ‘backstage’ work to complete:

The right choice of books through insight into what moves the market and what is on the minds of our customers. Our client Panta Rhei was irreplaceable here, who, thanks to their know-how about their products, was able to provide us with the right “material”.
Correct timing and technical setup of campaigns and their targeting – bidding strategies.
A distinctive and unique representation of the product, its story and idea for the banner creative and the video trailer for the book.

We live in the age of AI. With an engaging AI creative, you can improve not only reach, but also sales themselves. It’s no coincidence that the engagement, click-through rate, and views of our AI creative ad was so successful. People aren’t used to these kinds of enriched creatives, they’re something new and exciting to them. Be honest. How many times have you seen a video trailer for a book before this case study?

But at the same time, if we were to only create creatives for the sake of creative – mechanically, without understanding what will draw a scrolling customer into the plot of a book or product, then without a creative that has no head nor tail, we would not bring the client an increase in sales. Let’s not forget that AI tools are just a new brush and a more diverse palette of colours for clever creative creators and marketers. The limits of what AI can do are shifting every day. Find out if they are already a good fit for your product and business. Get in touch.

The specialists behind this project

Ondrej Lipták

Ondrej is an experienced senior business consultant and account manager with a specialisation in e-commerce. Thanks to many years of experience from small online stores to large online stores operating in 19 countries, he is able to effectively generate leads for companies, set up marketing processes, and optimise the overall online sales process. He is characterised by strategic thinking with an emphasis on results. He is not afraid to bring innovative solutions that support the growth and profitability of clients in a dynamic online environment.