Background 

McAfee is a globally recognized online protection software leader renowned for its cutting-edge digital solutions safeguarding individuals against scams, viruses, and privacy threats in an increasingly interconnected world. The brand is at the forefront of cybersecurity advancements, so it recognizes the importance of continually adapting to address growing consumer demands. As the market for cybersecurity software evolves and broadens, McAfee needs partners who can provide real-time data and insights to inform its strategic decisions and maintain its competitive edge in the ever-changing digital landscape.

The Challenge

McAfee faced significant challenges navigating the highly competitive antivirus software category on Amazon across a fast-growing number of global Amazon sites. McAfee realized they needed a new global approach to advertising and sought a solutions provider to leverage superior data and expert insights to improve advertising performance and grow market share in category by country. McAfee aimed to achieve both by partnering with Stackline.

The Solution 

Using intelligence from the Stackline Atlas platform, McAfee gained instant insight into the size of the Amazon antivirus software market and the shopper dynamics driving sales across the category. A quick review of the Atlas global market share data confirmed McAfee had many opportunities to grow its market share. Further, the same data provided a roadmap for how McAfee could regain its status as a market leader:

• Country-specific assortments: Atlas' segmentation functionality broke down total antivirus software sales by country and subscription length, revealing that consumer preferences varied widely from country to country. Some regions preferred longer-term subscriptions, while others preferred shorter-term subscriptions. Marketing efforts need to account for this dynamic if they hope to be successful, tailoring campaigns to optimize for the preferred subscription terms for each country. 
• Advertising efficacy: When advertising online, where and how a brand generates awareness outweighs how much awareness is generated by paid campaigns. Atlas advertising data revealed that McAfee over-extended its budget toward branded terms. In this way, advertising wasted ad spend by targeting shoppers already in the market for, or familiar with, McAfee products. Stackline Professional Services corrected this strategy by identifying incremental terms with significant opportunities to attract new-to-brand customers.
• Intelligent ad tech: Armed with a solid plan to drive new-to-brand awareness, the team set off on the critical juncture: translating strategy into concrete actions. To effectively activate the vast amount of SKU and keyword-level market data within Atlas and by country, McAfee and the Stackline Professional Services team leverage the AI-enabled Stackline Drive retail media advertising solution. Drive synthesizes millions of data points and adapts bids to optimize for the latest market conditions and shopper behavior.

With a clear path forward, the brand turned to Stackline's Professional Services (PS) team to action the Atlas insights. The team set about crafting incremental campaigns by region and subscription term, configuring them within Stackline's Drive advertising automation tool, an AI-enabled bidding software that constantly adjusts bids for maximum advertising efficiency. This AI-enabled approach to managed services perfectly balances the value of industry expertise with the capabilities of automation. 

Results

After nearly a year of leveraging Stackline's software and services to run advertising for McAfee's global Amazon business, the results could not be more conclusive: 

• AI-enabled labor savings: Drive supercharged bidding adjustments immediately. The AI-enabled advertising platform made over 2 million bidding adjustments on McAfee's behalf. Equivalent to the work of 7 full-time marketers.
• Improved Ad Performance: These ad optimizations resulted in $200,000 in bid savings while simultaneously delivering a 23% increase in paid traffic.
• Increased Ad Efficacy: For McAfee, the shift towards country-specific, incremental ads resulted in a 49% increase in Incremental Return on Ad Spend (iROAS) and a staggering 93% rise in Incremental Ad Sales.
• Increased Market Share: McAfee's new Atlas-informed, PS-managed, and Drive-enabled ad strategy caused the brand's market share to surge by 378 basis points and reestablished McAfee as the #1 best-selling global antivirus software on Amazon.

The collaboration between McAfee and Stackline is a testament to the power of innovative technology and industry expertise in enabling successful strategic partnerships.

For prospective clients, these impressive outcomes indicate the practical advantages they can achieve with Stackline. Whether navigating market complexities or maximizing advertising effectiveness, Stackline is the essential global partner for brands looking to succeed on Amazon and beyond. 

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About Stackline

On a mission to fuel the future of commerce by bringing brands and customers closer together, Stackline is the leading AI-enabled retail intelligence and activation platform for the world's most innovative brands.  Business leaders, product innovators, performance marketers, and financial firms trust Stackline as the single source of commerce truth. Fueled by proprietary neural networks and deep learning systems, Stackline's market insights, revenue metrics, behavioral data, and autonomous functionality create the actions that determine success or failure.

Founded in 2014 in Seattle, Stackline employs over 250 connected commerce professionals creating value for 7,000 global brands.