Building Brand Awareness Through Programmatic Advertising

For almost 200 years , Doulton has been a pioneer in water filtration. Having developed one of the world’s first domestic water filters, the brand has a rich heritage rooted in innovation, quality and trusted filtration technology. 

But in a category attracting more attention from agile start-ups and new market entrants, Doulton needed to reassert its authority and reach new audiences in a more targeted, measurable way. 

The wider objective was to establish Doulton as the trusted, go-to brand for water filtration across the UK and European markets. This meant building awareness of its expertise, launching its new positioning - ‘Pioneers of water filtration, since 1826’ and creating a campaign approach that could support sustained e-Commerce growth. 

With concerns around drinking water quality, taste, microplastics and sustainability becoming more prominent, there was a clear opportunity to put Doulton in front of people actively exploring better water filtration options. 

Doulton needed to reach people already showing interest in water filtration, better tasting water and more sustainable living. Programmatic was the key opportunity to build awareness at scale, introduce the refreshed brand positioning and drive more qualified traffic to the website. 

STM initially supported Doulton in strengthening its brand platform, helping to bring its heritage, expertise and distinctive product technology back into focus. 

At the heart of this was The Doulton Standard - a clear expression of the brand’s benchmark for better-tasting, cleaner water. This gave the campaign a strong creative and strategic platform to build from. 

From there, programmatic became central to the media approach. 

We developed a top-of-funnel programmatic campaign designed to drive new users to the Doulton website, using audience targeting to reach people showing relevant interests and intent around water filters, water purifiers, better-tasting water and more sustainable lifestyle choices. 

Rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach, the campaign was built around two key audience groups:

Water filtration audiences

People already showing interest in water filters, purifiers and clean drinking water solutions.

Eco-conscious audiences

People interested in sustainability, reducing waste and making more considered choices at home.

This allowed us to tailor the creative messaging to each audience, keeping the campaign relevant, specific and more likely to drive quality traffic. 

For users already further down the purchase journey, we also ran retargeting activity focused on people who had previously viewed products, added items to basket or started checkout. This helped keep Doulton front of mind and encouraged users to return to complete their purchase.

Tailoring Creative for Stronger Engagement

Creative was central to the programmatic strategy. In a display environment, the message needs to capture attention quickly, communicate the benefit clearly and feel relevant to the person seeing it. By tailoring the creative to each audience group, we could make the campaign more specific, useful and aligned to what each user was likely to care about. 

We developed a mix of native and display GIF assets, combining product-led visuals with lifestyle imagery to bring the benefits of Doulton’s filtration systems to life. 

For the water filtration audience, messaging focused on Doulton’s expertise and the idea of The Doulton Standard, helping position the brand as a trusted authority in the category. 

For the eco-conscious audience, the creative leaned into the benefits of filtration, including better-tasting water, fewer microplastics and the ability to retain essential minerals. 

Across the campaign, the creative was designed to strengthen brand awareness while still driving clear action. Doulton branding, website visibility and product messaging were built into the assets to help users quickly understand who Doulton is, what it offers and why it matters. 

The result was a programmatic campaign that worked across the funnel: building awareness, driving relevant traffic and re-engaging users with purchase intent.

The programmatic campaign delivered strong visibility at scale, while supporting measurable ecommerce performance.

In total, the campaign generated:

9.9 million Impressions

£48k in Conversion Revenue

436% ROAS on Remarketing

By combining high-impact awareness activity with more targeted retargeting, we helped Doulton reach new audiences, bring its refreshed positioning into the market and support users through the path to purchase. 

The campaign gave Doulton a scalable programmatic framework for always-on activity, with the flexibility to layer in seasonal and reactive campaigns around key moments throughout the year. 

Most importantly, it helped put Doulton’s story, products and point of difference in front of the audiences most likely to care, supporting the brand’s ambition to become the trusted, go-to name in water filtration across the UK and Europe.