# Howso Elevates Massive Ad Value, Resulting in Strong 10x ROI

Josh Cadorette

January 14, 2025

[Case Study](https://www.howso.com/category/case-study/)

**Overview**  
Founded in 2000, Scanbuy provides mobile data and marketing solutions to over 300 CPG brands, agencies, and retailers worldwide. One of Scanbuy’s core offerings is its CPG transaction and purchase dataset, a rich collection of deterministic in-store data collected from over 20 million opt-in grocery shoppers over the last three years. A second, newer data product, ExtendedAudiences™, uses complex algorithms to create look-alike audiences of “most-likely-to-buy” consumers for thousands of brand- and product-level audience segments. With Scanbuy, CPG brands reach the right grocery-shoppers with the right offers at the exact moments they are most likely to buy.

[Access Scanbuy Playground](https://playground.howso.com/scenarios/advertisement-prediction)

**Problem**  
In digital advertising, only about **10% of audience targeting** is based on deterministic datasets, while **90% relies on probabilistic models**, often generated through opaque “black-box” AI systems. These models introduce bias, inaccuracies, and a lack of explainability, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities in ad targeting. Advertisers needed a **transparent, reliable, and data-driven approach** to improve targeting accuracy and campaign performance.

**Solution**  
Howso’s **Causal AI-powered solution** redefined transparency in programmatic advertising. Unlike traditional black-box AI models, **Howso’s deterministic approach** enabled advertisers to construct customized audience segments based on real-time consumer purchase signals. With **counterfactual analysis capabilities**, advertisers could explore “what if” scenarios, refining their strategies dynamically.

Scanbuy took Howso and turned a dataset containing **100,000 consumers and expanded it to 1 million using look-alike ML modeling**. In a hypothetical example, Scanbuy could predict that people who buy Huggies diapers also often buy Rao’s pasta sauce. Howso’s explainable AI framework allows Scanbuy to make the decisioning logic of all ML models open for scrutiny. And since Scanbuy’s data is anonymized and opt-in, if a customer opts out of the core audience, that person is also removed from the extended audience – ensuring unbroken and fully compliant data privacy.

**Results**  
Using ExtendedAudiences, Scanbuy customers routinely connect with far larger number of consumers for no additional modeling costs — dramatically boosting campaign ROI. Typically, when an audience goes from deterministic to probabilistic, it experiences a decay in conversion accuracy of up to 50%. But when Scanbuy uses Howso to build probabilistic models, there is virtually zero reduction in audience quality.

In one example, a top global beverage brand sent offers to an original deterministic audience and got a **16% engagement rate**. Sending the same offer to a Scanbuy extended audience resulted in a **15% engagement rate** – virtually the same campaign success rate to an audience **10X larger**, with no additional incremental spend. This is a 10X breakthrough in campaign performance.

Click [**here**](https://playground.howso.com/scenarios/advertisement-prediction) to see the impact of Howso on Scanbuy for yourself.

## Platform  
Scanbuy’s platform offers a unique approach to mobile data and marketing solutions, providing CPG brands, agencies, and retailers with valuable insights derived from a rich collection of deterministic in-store data. By leveraging ExtendedAudiences™, marketers can create highly targeted audience segments based on consumer purchase signals, resulting in increased campaign success rates.

With Howso’s AI algorithm, Scanbuy is able to maintain data privacy standards while still delivering accurate and actionable insights to marketers. The platform's ability to seamlessly transition from deterministic to probabilistic data ensures that audiences remain engaged and conversions are optimized, leading to a strong return on investment for advertisers.

### Solutions  
Scanbuy’s solutions revolutionize the way advertisers reach their target audience, offering a unique combination of deterministic and probabilistic data to create look-alike audience segments. By predicting consumer behaviors and preferences, marketers can tailor their campaigns to resonate with potential customers and drive engagement.

Through its partnership with Howso, Scanbuy is able to enhance the value of its ad offerings by delivering targeted messaging to the most relevant audiences. This results in a 10x return on investment for advertisers, making Scanbuy’s solutions a powerful tool for driving ad performance and maximizing campaign success.