Machine learning-powered growth: Balaan increased advertisers by 5x with Moloco Commerce Media in 6 months

About Balaan

Balaan, a renowned luxury marketplace app in South Korea, caters to high-net-worth individuals by offering a curated selection of high-end products and services, ensuring a seamless and exclusive shopping experience. Balaan is responsible for over half of all online luxury goods sales in South Korea and currently serves over 162 million users. 

Challenge 

Established in 2015, Balaan quickly rose to prominence in the luxury platform market despite being a latecomer. Balaan secured its position as a leader in the domestic luxury market setting industry standards with its innovative services and policies, achieving rapid growth, evidenced by a high Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV). The company's commitment to customer-centric services was further highlighted by its remarkable 70% repurchase rate.

However, Balaan faced its share of challenges in the post-COVID era. Changes in user purchasing patterns and a downturn in luxury demand due to economic factors led to decreased sales. Traditionally, Balaan utilized a rule-based advertising recommendation system, filtering and displaying ads to users based on item popularity, price competitiveness, and delivery types. While this approach was effective to an extent, there needed to be a more personalized experience necessary to align with individual user preferences, which is critical in sustaining Balaan as an industry leader. Balaan recognized the need to introduce an advertising solution for advertisers that could secure a higher Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS) and decided to collaborate with Moloco.

Solution

Balaan partnered with the Moloco Commerce Media (MCM) to implement a Machine Learning (ML) advertising solution capable of providing an innovaive shopping experience. By utilizing Moloco's advanced ML technology, which leveraged Balaan's rich first-party data to deliver personalized ads that were highly relevant to users.

Moloco’s advanced ML model analyzed user behavior and preferences in real-time, serving the most relevant products to each user, reducing user ad fatigue, and improving the overall shopping experience. It also delivered high click-through and conversion rates for advertisers, enabling them to achieve a high ROAS with optimized ad spending — ultimately maximizing revenue generated from ads.

The Moloco Commerce Media platform's high usability, which enabled easy onboarding and campaign management, contributed to increased advertiser ad adoption and profitability for Balaan's ads business. 

Results

The partnership between Moloco ML-powered platform and Balaan's first-party data contributed to a successful and profitable advertising business for Balaan.

• +2000% improvement in ROAS
• 5x increase in advertisers ad adoption in 6 months
• 2x increase in ad spend to GMV in 6 months
• 73% of top 100 GMV advertisers adopted the solution
• +14% GMV for advertisers who used the ad solution vs. -17% GMV drop for those who did not use the ad solution (Q2 vs. Q1)

‍The synergy between Moloco's machine learning technology expertise and Balaan's first-party data has been enormous. We’ve witnessed outstanding ROAS, and both Balaan and our advertising partners are experiencing steady incremental revenue directly attributable to Moloco's Commerce Media platform.

— Hyungjun Choi, COO, Balaan
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Ready to get started with Moloco Commerce Media? Connect with our team today.