• by Les Luchter , March 31, 2025

OTC health brands dominated InMarket’s “Breakthrough Moments” for 2024, accounting for four of the real-time marketing platform’s nine honored mobile campaigns, which are selected based on a combination of high click-through/engagement rates and sales lift.

Campaigns from Bayer, Olly, Omnit and Azo made the cut, compared with just one health brand apiece in 2023 and 2022 (Curad bandages and SmartyPants vitamins, respectively)

Michael Della Penna, InMarket’s chief strategy officer, credits the health brands’ Breakthrough Moments to their use of multiple products “to appeal to a broader audience,” and to savings offers, important “in a time where consumers are so price-conscious and value-oriented,” he told Marketing Daily.

Both factors were on display in Bayer’s campaign, which promoted allergy relief with  a “Save Up To $28” offer for Claritan, Astepro and Afrin, set against a mowed grass background.  InMarket says the campaign generated a $4.52 iROAS (Incremental Return on Ad Spend ), 3.6% sales lift, and $677,000 in incremental sales.

Olly combined a $4 savings offer with a slideshow of different sleep gummy types, set against backgrounds “of relaxing blue and purple, colors associated with calmness and sleepiness” and featuring punny lines like “Don’t sleep on $4 cash back” and a “Shop Now” call-to action. Results: an $8.15 iROAS, and 2.4% sales lift.

Azo, which markets products that treat female urinary tract and yeast infections,  used a multiproduct carousel, with each page combining “a gradient background palette that perfectly matches the product’s packaging,” a headline highlighting specific product benefits, the Azo logo , and a “Shop Now” button. The campaign achieved a 6.27% CTR, which InMarket notes is 10.5x above the industry benchmark.

Marketing its Alpha Brain supplement, Omnit benefited by using what Della Penna terms the “halo effect” of associating with bigger brands. In this case, that bigger brand was Target, with the ad showing a Target shopping basketfilled with bottles of Alpha Brain – against a background divided between both brands’ colors.  This campaign delivered a 6.17% CTR, 10.3X above the industry benchmark.

Della Penna suggests that health brands have shown up more in the “Breakthrough Moments” partly because they don’t want to lose sales to private label brands. Discounts and portfolios of brands, he says, are effective in heading off “a potential breach for the generic brand on the shelf versus the name brand.

Besides the health brands, 2024’s Breakthrough Moments included two campaigns from alcoholic brands, both of which tied in with basketball:

Coors Light, with a gamified effort that ran during last year’s March Madness (10.08% CTR, 16.3% engagement rate), and Jack Daniels, with a campaign titled “Add Jack to Your Bracket” (5.59% CTR).

Other Breakthrough Moments covered food, drink and gaming:

Danone, introducing Peppermint Mocha and Pumpkin Pie Spice flavors of International Delight cold foams and creamers (over $5 iROAS and $3 million+ in incremental sales).

C4’s Orange Creamsicle energy drink, with a campaign featuring a sweepstakes for an Acura car and a tie-in to 7-Eleven (5.84% CTR, 87% v ideo completion rate, and 2.3% incremental visit lift).

Acer’s Nitro V 15 gaming laptop, which used a bold “Live for Victory” headline and a “Buy Now” CTA, achieving a 5.28% CTR and a quote in the InMarket report from Michelle Leavitt, Acer’s director of consumer marketing:  “We successfully reached our target customers during their shopping journey, significantly boosting awareness and driving them to purchase.”

InMarket’s nine “Breakthough Moments” campaigns were selected from at least 1,000 different campaigns run via the company’s platform in 2024.