How UNICEF Boosted Demand Gen ROAS 742% with Website-Based Targeting
In short:
Delve Deeper helped UNICEF break out of saturated traditional fundraising audiences by building a Demand Gen campaign around custom segments defined by the websites people visited rather than explicit charitable interests.
By structuring five distinct interest categories as separate ad groups, UNICEF identified high-value donor audiences well outside its usual targeting, achieving 742% higher ROAS, 19% lower cost per conversion, and nearly 12x higher conversion value compared to the account’s Demand Gen average.
The challenge:
UNICEF’s Demand Gen campaigns had become saturated within traditional fundraising audiences, lookalikes and charity-interest segments, which capped incremental reach. Growth from these audiences was slowing, and there was no clear path to scaling further within the same targeting approach.
The goal was to find new, scalable audiences: people likely to donate who hadn’t explicitly signalled a charitable interest, and who existing targeting simply wasn’t reaching.
The approach:
UNICEF launched a dedicated Demand Gen campaign built on custom segments defined by the websites people visited, chosen for their relevance to UNICEF’s mission. Each ad group represented a different interest category: Premium Global News, Investors & Finance, International Finance, Lifestyle & Urban Apps, and Local Charities.
Structuring each category as a separate ad group made it possible to compare audience quality directly and pinpoint which segments were driving the strongest donor behavior. Delve Deeper designed and ran the campaign, structuring the custom segments and ad groups to test and identify the strongest new donor audiences.
Summary:
Delve Deeper Results:
The campaign delivered a strong result against the account’s Demand Gen average during the test flight. Cost per conversion fell 19%, conversion value rose nearly twelvefold, and ROAS improved 742%.
Beyond the headline figures, the test proved that website-based targeting can surface high-intent donors well outside traditional charity interests. Premium Global News stood out as the clearest opportunity to test further and scale, while the remaining segments offered useful insight into which website categories were less effective.
The campaign didn’t just improve performance. It opened up an entirely new targeting approach with room to grow.