Programmatic Ads Harnessing Local Culture for PedidosYa

Challenge:

PedidosYa aimed to increase app engagement by creating highly relevant, contextually aware ads that resonated with users’ local culture and immediate needs. The challenge was to deliver personalized, timely messaging that felt native to the audience, increasing both food orders and small-package deliveries in a highly competitive market.

Solution:

Programmatic Ads with Cultural Insights: I developed a series of programmatic ads that capitalized on local cultural insights, delivering highly relevant, context-driven messaging at the right moment. The key idea was to target users with ads that felt personal, familiar, and immediate.

Weather-Triggered Ads: One of the standout features of the campaign was the use of weather data to trigger ads in real-time. For example, based on weather forecasts, we created an ad that activated exclusively when it started to rain, promoting Sancocho—a traditional comfort food—encouraging users to order it during rainy weather, which is culturally seen as the perfect time for this dish.

Waze Integration for Local Needs: Recognizing the frustration of traffic, I created Waze ads that responded to the immediate challenges of the users. These ads featured colloquial, localized language to address the typical problems commuters face, such as heavy traffic or delays. The ads highlighted the convenience of PedidosYa not only for food delivery but also for sending or receiving small packages, making it easier for users to solve their immediate problems with a quick order or a package pickup, all in one app.

Local Language and Contextual Messaging: The ads used informal, colloquial language that resonated with the local culture, ensuring that messaging felt organic to users’ daily experiences. For instance, phrases like "¿Lluvia? ¡Pide tu Sancocho ya!" ("Rain? Order your Sancocho now!") and "¿Estancado en el tráfico? Deja que PedidosYa te solucione el hambre y los paquetes" ("Stuck in traffic? Let PedidosYa solve your hunger and packages") made the messaging feel native and approachable.
Results:

Increased Engagement and Conversion: The use of local cultural insights, weather-triggered ads, and Waze integration resulted in higher-than-average click-through rates (CTR) and conversions for food and small-package orders.

Higher Relevance and Localized Impact: The culturally relevant messaging greatly increased brand recognition and user retention, as users felt the ads were tailored to their immediate needs and local context.

Boosted Sales and App Usage: The programmatic ads led to an uptick in both food orders and small-package deliveries, with the Sancocho ad driving specific spikes during rainy weather. Additionally, the Waze ads helped increase active app users by addressing their real-time challenges (e.g., traffic) with quick solutions.

By leveraging programmatic advertising tied to local weather and cultural insights, this campaign successfully connected with users in a highly personal and relevant way, driving increased usage of both food delivery and small-package services within PedidosYa.