Marks & Spencer is one of the UK’s most iconic retailers, serving millions of customers across clothing, footwear, beauty and home.
As part of its long-term “Reshaping for Growth” strategy, M&S has continued to invest in its stores, supply chain and digital capabilities, with a focus on growing customer numbers, increasing market share and delivering profitable sales growth.
As shopping behaviours continue to evolve, M&S has also been exploring new ways to reach and engage customers beyond its established digital channels.
Following several years of market share growth, M&S was looking for new opportunities to drive incremental, profitable growth while continuing to broaden its appeal to new and younger customers without losing relevance with its established customer base.
With consumers increasingly searching for and discovering products outside traditional search engines, M&S saw an opportunity to complement its existing search strategy by reaching high-intent shoppers across new commerce and search environments.
The challenge was to extend reach beyond existing audiences, attract valuable new customers and support continued online growth - while maintaining the strong performance and customer experience expected from its established marketing channels.
adMarketplace provided M&S with a way to extend its search strategy beyond traditional search engines through a single partnership, accessing high-intent consumer journeys across Buy Now Pay Later apps, privacy-focused browsers and emerging AI experiences.
These environments offered an opportunity to reach consumers at different points in their shopping journey, including audiences that aligned with M&S’s ambition to attract new and younger customers.
The partnership began with a test budget, allowing M&S to evaluate the quality and commercial value of the traffic. Strong initial results gave M&S the confidence to scale, with the activity evolving into a longer-term partnership and a broader programme of activity.
Working as an extension of the M&S team, adMarketplace developed the partnership across four key areas:
Expanding search reach: M&S launched across adMarketplace’s network of high-intent search and commerce environments, including leading BNPL apps, browsers and AI experiences, extending its presence beyond traditional search engines.
Growing category coverage: As performance developed, M&S expanded beyond its initial activity into categories including footwear, boots, swimwear and handbags, unlocking additional opportunities to reach shoppers and scale the campaign.
Evolving the optimisation strategy: The partnership expanded from an initial ROAS-focused campaign to include Quality Visit optimisation, allowing M&S and adMarketplace to optimise not only towards immediate revenue but also towards high-quality customer engagement.
Measuring beyond the click: adMarketplace worked closely with M&S to align reporting with its first-party measurement and understand what customers did after arriving on site. This included assessing Browse Page Views per Visit alongside commercial metrics such as AOV, Revenue Per Click and new customer acquisition.
The partnership showed that reaching shoppers across new search environments could deliver strong performance and valuable new customers.
32%+ higher AOV
Average Order Value consistently exceeded M&S benchmarks, averaging approximately 32% higher and reaching as much as 56% higher during the partnership.
73% higher new customer rate
adMarketplace delivered a new customer rate 73% higher than M&S’s broader performance marketing benchmark, helping M&S reach customers beyond its established channels.
Strong on-site engagement
Customers reached through adMarketplace demonstrated strong engagement, comparable with M&S’s established paid media channels.
A Managed Service Partnership
The partnership has developed beyond media delivery, with adMarketplace providing a hands-on managed service and working closely with M&S to identify new growth opportunities, evolve optimisation strategies and align measurement with the metrics that matter to its business.
This collaborative approach has allowed the teams to continually test, learn and expand activity as new publishers, placements and capabilities become available.
Looking ahead, the focus is on reaching more high-value new customers and expanding into new and exclusive generic and native search opportunities as they become available across the adMarketplace network.
As these new environments develop, M&S has the opportunity to move more activity into channels that complement its established search strategy, while continuing to validate performance against its own first-party data and maintaining a focus on profitable growth.
“Working with adMarketplace has given us a new way to extend our search activity and understand where it can add value alongside our existing channels. We’ve seen particularly strong results in attracting new customers, and the team has worked closely with us to test, learn and evolve the activity as the partnership has grown.”
Client at Marks & Spencer
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