PPC case study: How Havas & Kia grew market share by 61%

Havas Media Network partnered with Adthena to evolve Kia UK‘s paid search strategy, combining Brand Activator with a tiered, value-based bidding model to drive performance without increasing overall budget.

By reallocating spend more effectively and focusing investment where it mattered most, the team cut brand campaign costs by 9%, increased test drives by 60%, and grew share of voice by up to 61% in high-priority categories.

Kia’s paid search activity has grown significantly, covering everything from new cars, to aftersales, motability, and dealer support.

However, rising competition has made market position harder to maintain, and increased pressure on non-brand spend. For example in the electric vehicles category, advertiser volume rose by 45% within a year.

With the SERP becoming more crowded and market conditions rapidly changing, Kia needed a faster, more strategic way to reduce non-incremental brand spend and re-allocate budget to support these categories. Manual reallocation was time-consuming and reactive, especially amid growing competition.

However, maintaining high traffic quality and driving high-value leads (e.g. Test Drives or Dealer Appointments) was also a key KPI alongside this increased non-brand spend. Although Kia optimized towards value, their value-based bidding model wasn’t advanced enough to support the account’s growing complexity level and multiple business areas, and limited insight into performance made it difficult to optimize.

Havas implemented Adthena’s Brand Activator for Kia across 20 brand terms, streamlining efficiency and automating brand protection. The reduced unnecessary spend and freed time, shifting the team’s focus from manual optimization to strategy.

Adthena’s Share of Clicks data became instrumental in guiding reinvestment, surfacing high-growth categories like Electric and SUV, and tracking the market success of increased spend. Initially used for monthly reporting, Adthena was soon integrated into weekly reviews, increasing agility in a competitive market.

A month post-launch, a tiered value-based bidding model was introduced as a more precise, data-driven structure to support their lead quality goals. Unique values were assigned to 13 different lead types, and the value hierarchy was customized to each campaign subset depending on its primary focus (new cars, motability, dealer etc), using custom variable adjustments.

With Adthena’s Market Share insights, Brand Activator, and a sophisticated bidding model, Kia gained the visibility and control needed to make faster, smarter decisions, instantly.