How Delve Deeper Helped UNICEF Scale Emergency Fundraising Through Paid Search
In short:
Delve Deeper helped UNICEF improve emergency fundraising performance by restructuring its paid search campaigns to separate branded and non-brand search traffic into dedicated campaign structures.
By giving branded and generic searches separate bidding and optimization signals, UNICEF achieved 7.3x ROAS on Brand Emergency campaigns in the UAE, 5.1x ROAS in MENA, and a 45% increase in ROAS on generic emergency campaigns in MENA while reducing spend by 14%.
The result was cleaner optimization on both sides and significantly stronger returns across emergency fundraising in the UAE and MENA.
The challenge:
UNICEF’s emergency campaigns, including those responding to the crisis in Gaza, were volatile and difficult to scale efficiently. Branded and generic emergency searches were grouped within the same campaigns, sending mixed intent signals to automated bidding.
The problem was structural. Branded traffic carries far higher intent, lower CPCs, and stronger ROAS than generic search, but blended together, those differences were invisible to the bidding algorithm. Instead of optimizing cleanly against one type of audience, each campaign was trying to serve two very different ones at once.
The result was inconsistent optimization and limited performance across the account. The signal was there, it just wasn’t being heard.
The approach:
Delve Deeper drew a clear line between branded and generic traffic. Branded emergency keywords were moved into dedicated Brand Emergency campaigns, fully separated from generic emergency terms, giving each campaign a single, consistent audience to optimize against.
With branded traffic no longer distorting the bidding signal, both sides of the account could finally perform on their own terms. Brand campaigns could bid efficiently against high-intent donors already searching for UNICEF. Generic campaigns could focus on reaching new audiences without being pulled in two directions at once.
Delve Deeper led the full restructuring strategy and implementation across Search, Video, and Display, ensuring cleaner segmentation and more efficient optimization throughout.
Summary:
Delve Deeper Results:
The impact was immediate and showed up clearly in the numbers. The new Brand Emergency campaigns turned every dollar spent into far more in donations, 7.3x ROAS in the UAE and 5.1x in MENA, both well beyond breaking even.
The benefits didn’t stop with branded traffic. Once high-intent searches were separated out, the generic campaigns in MENA saw returns climb 45% while spend dropped 14%, more impact for less money. In the UAE, strong results came from both the restructure and higher seasonal giving.
Two campaigns. One structural fix. Performance improvements across the board.