CaseStudy

Subscripition

Plated Turns Aspirational Foodies
Into Subscribers With Taboola“Taboola was the perfect partner for Plated as we entered the world of content marketing, giving
us the flexibility to test and optimize toward different goals as our priorities changed, and ultimately
generating entirely new strategies to help drive sales.”- Matt Kerestesy, Director of Paid Media, Plated

COMPANY

Plated is a New York-based startup that
assembles and delivers meal “boxes” inwhich ingredients are locally sourced.

CHALLENGE

Expand customer reach outside of the usual
acquisition channels.

SOLUTION

Leverage Taboola’s technology to conduct
A/B testing and analyze content iterations
for optimizations.

RESULTS

Significant drop in CPA and increase in highquality conversions.

75%
Decrease InAcquisition Cost

1BImpressions
Generated

12%
Increase in New
Member Sign-Ups

CaseStudy

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Introduction

Digital upstart, Plated, delivers high-quality ingredientsand a simple recipe to customers’ doorsteps, equippingthem to make a chef-designed meal in the comfortof their own homes. The team was experimenting
across all kinds of customer acquisition channels (e.g.
Facebook, Adwords, display ads) when they discoveredthat “organic” content (e.g. press coverage) often drove
the most interested and knowledgeable consumers totheir site. Looking to further expand into the content
marketing space, and impressed with the flexibility andlong-term vision of Taboola’s account managers, theteams partnered together to promote Plated’s uniquestory on premium publishers around the web andreach their target audience when they’re in “contentconsumption” mode.

Strategic Content Recommendation Analyzed through A/B Testing

Recommended	  from	  the	  Web	  This Dinner Hack Has
Millennials Ditching
Delivery
Plated	  This Dinner Hack Has
Millennials Ditching
Delivery
Plated	  CaseStudy

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Creative Optimizations Lower Customer Acquisition Costs by 75% on Taboola

Taboola’s A/B testing empowered Plated to analyze
hundreds of different content iterations, showcasing avariety of headlines, thumbnails, and content sources.
This trial revealed specific keywords that resonatedmost with Plated’s target audience, as well as stylized,
close-up product shots that performed best acrossboth desktop and mobile platforms. Armed with thesecreative “best practices,” the team optimized towards
a variety of goals, such as increasing click-throughrate (CTR) and lowering cost-per-click (CPC), before
focusing on driving conversions. Rigorous testing andoptimization around this goal resulted in a 75% drop inCPA.

Mining Data to Generate New Content Strategies

Plated uncovered new content strategy ideas from
Taboola’s analytics, which found that positive thirdparty media coverage performed as well as, or better
than, Plated’s own blog content. Data further revealed
that many premium sites were top referring publishersof Plated’s content around the Web. These insights

empowered Plated to not only optimize toward
promoting “trusted sources,” but also work withsuccessful publishers on creating additional content
to share across Taboola’s network, driving morehigh-quality conversions.

Reaching 1B Monthly Impressions, 12% Boost in Customer Sign-Ups

Plated’s highly-targeted campaigns continue toscale on Taboola’s platform, generating over 1 billion
impressions in January 2015 alone (and expected tosoon reach over 2 billion monthly impressions). This

scale and increased focus on conversions, has led toa 12% jump in new customer sign-ups, and over 3.5
million total clicks, since Plated began promoting its
story on Taboola’s network.