CASE STUDIES: How retail, travel and auto brands are nailing display ads

Display ads are sometimes easy to overlook, however, when planned thoughtfully and executed well, they can support consistent reach, brand consideration, and conversion - especially when used alongside other digital channels.

That’s why, some 30 plus years after their inception, display ad spend is still on the rise. In the UK, it is expected to continue its “strong trajectory” to break through the £20bn ad spend barrier in 2026, according to data from AA WARC.

StackAdapt’s FREE Display Advertising Isn’t Dead guide breaks down how to build display ads, from strategy and creative, to targeting and optimisation, so your ads don’t just stand out, but actually get clicked. Download now to make sure you are getting the most out of display.

Here's a little taster of some of the insights you can get as StackAdapt shares how businesses in three different sectors - travel, retail and auto - have driven results through display.

Travel and tourism - Hyatt Asia Pacific

Travel marketers face a unique challenge: long consideration cycles and unpredictable booking behaviour. Interest often spikes around seasonal trends, limited-time offers, or major global events, making timing just as important as messaging. 

Travellers may browse destinations for weeks, compare prices across platforms, and wait for the right moment before committing. Display advertising plays a key role in capturing intent, no matter what drives it. 

Hyatt Asia Pacific wanted to boost mid-funnel engagement and consideration for its luxury Grand Hyatt brand in South Korea, India and Hong Kong.

Hyatt Hotels’ Asia Pacific team partnered with StackAdapt to simplify multichannel media buying, amplify brand messaging, and strengthen measurement beyond traditional revenue KPIs. The campaign drove a 43% uplift in brand consideration.

Tactics included:

Travel Targeting

StackAdapt’s AI-powered targeting enabled Hyatt Asia Pacific to identify and retarget luxury travellers that were actively researching premium stays. Machine learning models identified behaviour and intent signals, while third-party audience segments refined precision and ensured efficient delivery. This approach allowed Hyatt Asia Pacific to engage the right audience at the right time.

Premium Inventory and Creatives

With target audiences identified, StackAdapt helped Hyatt Asia Pacific deploy compelling creative across key formats - most notably through in-banner video, which brought the Grand Hyatt experience to life.

The ads were built to inspire action and aligned closely with the preferences of luxury travellers. 

The campaign activated across connected TV, display, and in-banner video, ensuring consistent and immersive messaging. StackAdapt’s unified platform simplified execution, allowing Hyatt Asia Pacific to manage cross-channel delivery, optimise for frequency, and fine-tune formats based on engagement signals. 

Enhanced Measurement

Insights from StackAdapt’s Brand Lift Study surfaced shifts in audience perception in real time, while social retargeting re-engaged high-interest users across platforms, extending reach and moving users further down the funnel. 

However, measurement went beyond upper-funnel metrics. StackAdapt’s Destination Visitation Measurement solution gave Hyatt Asia Pacific visibility into on-the-ground hotel visits, offering a meaningful view of how online engagement translated into real-world action.

Auto - Click Here Digital and Team Toyota

Similar to travel and tourism, automotive marketers face customers with lengthy consideration cycles and complex, non-linear buying journeys. Next to buying a home, purchasing a car is one of the biggest financial decisions the average person will make. 

Buyers may research models for months and compare features across countless brands before making a purchase. Staying visible throughout the process without becoming repetitive requires a deliberate approach. 

Digital advertising agency Click Here Digital worked with its client, a Florida-based Team Toyota car dealership, to create a strategy to combat supply chain delays and connect with shoppers looking to buy used cars.

It focused on driving online form submissions on the dealership’s website by leveraging dynamic creative capabilities, which led to conversion volume increasing by 38%.

Tactics included:

Prospecting

Click Here Digital employed a mix of interest targeting, reaching users who have browsed online about car maintenance, auto parts, or used cars, as well as third-party segments to reach users in-market for a used car. 

High-Intent Retargeting

Consumers were retargeted who had visited the Team Toyota site, and a CRM list of users who had submitted their details on site in the past 90 days. 

Display

In order to showcase the dealership’s car inventory while driving low-funnel actions on site, Click Here chose display as their main channel for this campaign.

It ran dynamic feed and dynamic retargeting creatives that showcased multiple products at a time, listing price, year, and image, in order to garner the most interest from users. 

It leveraged dynamic feed ad units, which featured a dynamic macro in the ad tags to automatically update creatives daily. 

Click Here Digital also used dynamic retargeting ad units, where the user was shown the car that they had viewed previously or similar vehicles. Their lookback window was 90 days, as this has historically been the length of the research period for a used car buyer. 

The agency optimised for best performance, leveraging two machine learning tools within StackAdapt’s platform, Bid Factors and Deals, to specifically increase click performance, while keeping the cost of bids low.

Bid Factors tested multiple third-party segments, and added bid adjustments to optimise towards the best performing audience lists. 

To increase click through rate, viewability and engagement, Click Here Digital employed a performance-driven group of deals, ensuring that ads ran on historically high-performing sites and apps in terms of clicks.

This resulted in cost per click decreasing 65% and click through rates jumping 25% as it successfully promoted Team Toyota’s used car inventory.

Retail - Supreme Engineering

In retail, campaigns move quickly. Pricing shifts, inventory changes, and seasonal demand can all influence purchase decisions.

Australian 4x4 suspensions systems and off-road accessories manufacturer and distributor Superior Engineering, a nationally recognised brand, successfully shifted from awareness-led marketing to a conversion-driven approach in the run-up to Black Friday 2024. 

Working with StackAdapt, its media buying agency Sunny Advertising combined tailored creative, precise targeting, and strategic timing to boost return on ad spend (ROAS) by an astonishing 52 times.

The team introduced dynamic display as a lower-funnel tactic to convert high-intent shoppers. It produced custom banners, complete with real-time pricing, which created timely, highly relevant ad experiences that re-engaged audiences during peak Black Friday moments. 

While Superior Engineering ran a short 10-day Black Friday campaign in 2023, it significantly expanded this to 32 days in 2024, launching earlier VIP sales accompanied with stronger calls to action. 

The campaign rolled out a phased countdown that built genuine anticipation ahead of Black Friday.

The extended runway maximised visibility and created multiple high-impact touchpoints by: 

• Launching dynamic banner ads tailored to Superior Engineering’s audience
• Serving dynamic creative to consumers who engaged with teaser ads to reinforce intent
• Keeping the sale top of mind throughout the lead-up to Black Friday 
• Guiding shoppers steadily along the path to purchase 

StackAdapt’s Dynamic Retargeting solution ensured ads were delivered at the most impactful stage of the user journey, while real-time optimisation maximised efficiency. 

To discover more insights into display advertising, download StackAdapt’s FREE Display Advertising Isn’t Dead guide. Learn:

1. How to get started with display advertising
2. Creative best practices from industry experts
3. Display ad design faux pas to avoid
4. How to best use AI in display advertising