When tracking the results of a marketing investment can feel like a black box, sometimes it’s impossible to know what’s actually driving the results. This was the reality for a leading B2B SaaS company specializing in people analytics and workforce intelligence, which was struggling to connect its programmatic spend to a qualified pipeline.
To strengthen its account-based marketing (ABM) strategy and drive more qualified engagement from senior decision-makers across the company, the company and its agency of record, Houle Media, needed clearer proof that its investment was translating into meaningful engagement and impact on the pipeline.
Swell is a performance-driven media agency that helps brands grow through data-driven strategy, planning and execution across digital channels. The company builds media solutions rooted in research and audience insights, offering services including media strategy, paid search and social, programmatic, SEO, performance TV and in-market sales.
Swell’s objectives
Swell’s approach is results-driven and channel-agnostic, combining industry tools, artificial intelligence (AI) innovations and human expertise to predict, activate and measure campaigns aligned with core business KPIs.
In addition to meeting their customers’ needs, Swell wanted to see if its legacy programmatic partner was truly delivering the best performance for enterprise ABM. To answer this question, Swell designed a strict head-to-head test under fully controlled conditions, with identical budgets, deadlines, target account lists, seniority levels, and verticals. The goal was to identify which approach could generate stronger qualified engagement and measurable actions throughout the funnel.
How AI Digital approached ABM differently
To achieve this, enter Digital AI which offers competitive testing with an accuracy-driven ABM strategy built around contextual relevance, audience accuracy, and continuous optimization. AI Digital operates as an AI-native media consultancy. Building on its Open Garden framework, the company combines AI-driven optimization with practical strategic monitoring to ensure media decisions are aligned with business outcomes rather than platform incentives.
This approach is particularly effective in enterprise ABM, where clean data, audience control, and explainable metrics are essential. As part of this commitment, AI Digital’s unbiased execution, continuous optimization, and disciplined testing methodology enabled a fair head-to-head comparison and delivered measurable gains in qualified engagement and conversion efficiency.
AI Digital’s campaign solution combined high-level prospecting with structured retargeting to engage decision-makers throughout the buying journey. The company deploys a mix of native and video formats in contextually aligned environments to improve message resonance, while targeting highly specific account segments and high-level decision makers in relevant industries.
The results
Performance was tracked using multi-touch attribution, ensuring that impressions, clicks and conversions could be directly linked to on-site actions. Additionally, ongoing optimization was supported by monthly reporting and feedback loops that refined creative, bidding and audience strategies. AI Digital worked closely with Swell to maintain clean data, ensure audience deduplication, and maintain fair testing conditions throughout the evaluation.
The campaign outperformed the incumbent media partner on all key performance metrics, as AI Digital delivered three times the click-through rate, twice the conversion efficiency, and a 25% increase in video completion rate compared to the benchmark.
Importantly, AI Digital’s ABM prospecting matched or exceeded retargeting performance, demonstrating stronger qualified interest earlier in the funnel and reinforcing the effectiveness of its audience modeling and contextual strategy. Based on these results, Swell awarded AI Digital the ongoing media business for the client and expanded the partnership.
“The comparative performance results were very encouraging,” said Natasha Tibbetts, senior vice president of media at Swell Media. “This reinforced that transparency, trust and disciplined best practices drive data integrity.”