Case Study: M&C Saatchi Mobile achieves 80% more conversions and 32% lower CPA with OpenX programmatic mobile buying

How M&C Saatchi Mobile used programmatic mobile buying to improve multi-device campaign performance

M&C Saatchi Mobile, a mobile-first media agency, teamed with OpenX to help a major consumer tech advertiser that had been running desktop-heavy campaigns and wasn’t seeing comparable mobile results. The agency wanted to test whether programmatic mobile web—using only high-quality, premium inventory—could play a meaningful role in the conversion funnel and improve overall campaign performance.

They ran a one-month head-to-head test on the OpenX Exchange with equal budgets for desktop-only and mobile-only buys, tracking conversions by device. Mobile targeting produced 80% more conversions, a 32% lower CPA and 27% higher ROAS (10% above benchmark), and even drove some tablet conversions, while desktop delivered a 17% higher revenue-per-acquisition. The test showed that premium programmatic mobile is an efficient first touch and that cross-device buying—leveraging each device’s strengths—delivers the best overall results.

M&C Saatchi