How Menkind Scaled Revenue by 143% with Corvidae AI

Gift Universe brand Menkind was scaling, but visibility into their customer journey was blocked by fragmented data.

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Gifting Value to Grow and Rebuild Strategy around Corvidae AI

A small but perfectly formed gift.
Menkind is a leading UK gifting and gadget retailer, part of the Gift Universe group, scaling fast across ecommerce.
Tom Phillips @ Gift Universe

With GA, we never really had a lot of trust in the data. The way GA handles cross-network traffic is just not really that useful. It was hard to understand where the actual sales and efficiencies were coming from.

— Tom Phillips: Senior Digital Marketing Manager @ Gift Universe

The Challenge

Removing Waste and Attributing Away from Bottom of Funnel Activity

Gift Universe brand Menkind was scaling fast, but fragmented attribution was blocking visibility into real customer journeys.

Relying on Google Analytics last-touch models, the team was over crediting bottom-of-funnel channels, under-valuing paid search, and haemorrhaging budget to affiliate fraud it couldn't see.

Corvidae changed all of that.

Cookieless Measurement

Menkind was growing, but their analytics stack was working against them.

Relying on standard Google Analytics dashboards meant customer conversion paths were inaccurate - particularly across their affiliate networks, where high-volume partners were claiming inflated sales under last-click models.

The loss of 3rd party cookies from Chrome and all other browsers was a catalyst. "That was a very big conversation and probably one of the main things that led us to Corvidae," Tom explains.

The cookieless aspect was extremely important. That was a very big conversation and probably one of the main things that led us to Corvidae

— Tom Phillips: Senior Digital Marketing Manager @ Gift Universe

A major catalyst for seeking a new solution was the impending loss of third-party cookies and the need for a privacy-first approach.

Relying on Google Analytics and Google Ads attribution meant over-indexing on last touch data and struggling to prove the true value of upper-funnel and affiliate campaigns.

"With GA, we never really had a lot of trust in the data. The way GA handles cross-network traffic is just not really that useful. It was hard to understand where the actual sales and efficiencies were coming from," explains Tom Phillips, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Gift Universe.

Affiliates Cannibalisation

Furthermore, fragmented data was masking inefficiencies in their affiliate programme.

"We had a lot of issues with fraud, putting too much money into certain types of affiliates - we got an understanding of which affiliates drive which part of the funnel and adjusted affiliate rates based on Corvidae incrementality." Tom advised.

Corvidae showed us quite clearly that much of our affiliates was not incremental.

We cut those commission rates back and didn't see any drop to sales; we just saved the cash and reinvested it into channels driving incremental traffic.

— Tom Phillips: Senior Digital Marketing Manager @ Gift Universe
Journey Explorer allows interrogation of individual conversion journeys
Conversion journeys joined in Corvidae AI.

The Solution

In the early stages of deployment, using Corvidae's Journey Explorer, the team identified anomalous affiliate activity - including an early affiliates partner generating junk click-throughs - which had gone completely undetected using GA4.

Menkind was able to safely reduce voucher and cashback affiliate commission rates to near-zero with no drop in real sales, immediately freeing budget to reinvest in proven incremental search channels.

Corvidae AI is a unified attribution and acquisition platform for performance marketers.

Its globally patented AI rebuilds customer journeys from raw, first-party eventstream data - no cookies or identifiers, fully GDPR & CCPA compliant - reconstructing journeys to be 40-50% longer than legacy ID-based systems.

The results spoke for themselves.

There was such a clear disparity between the Corvidae campaigns and the originals that it was a no-brainer. When the CEO and MD see results like that, they're going to back it.

— Tom Phillips: Senior Digital Marketing Manager @ Gift Universe

How Corvidae Works

Instead of relying on fragile first or third-party cookies that break across devices, Corvidae utilises a patented event stitching process developed in partnership with the University of Edinburgh AI lab which only requires a first-party pixel.

Raw first-party event streams are collected directly from the client's domain and AdTech, then Corvidae's deep learning neural networks rebuild fragmented paths to establish a single, unified customer journey - all without a single cookie or 3rd party dataset in the mix.

Use AI Journeys to Attribute True Value

Rebuild Broken Customer Attribution

Move away from failing cookie and id-stitched analytics, where the majority of your decisions are based on broken data.

Our AI probabilistically rebuilds cross-channel journeys using only 1st-party event stream data: no cookies!

Validate the transformational impact of accurate attribution using A/B split tests in your AdTech & benefit from automated GDPR and CCPA compliance.

Powering Ad Automation

Acquisition, Automated by AI.

With journeys rebuilt, Corvidae feeds the true value of every touchpoint back into Google Ads. Smart Bidding then trains on complete data - not the last-click fragment - so it bids on the moments that actually create new customers, earlier and at lower cost.

Feed AdTech True Customer Journeys

Feed AdTech True Journeys With Corvidae AI

Google's AI can only optimise ad placements using conversions it can see.

Corvidae's patented stitching feeds the true value of top-of-funnel touchpoints back into your AdTech.

This prevents Google from overspending on competitive bottom-of-funnel auctions and guides it to find net-new customers earlier: instantly generating incremental revenue at a lower CPA.

Google's AI can only optimise placements using the conversions it can see.

Corvidae's patented stitching feeds the true value of top-of-funnel touchpoints back into your AdTech - preventing overspend on competitive bottom-of-funnel auctions and guiding it to find net-new customers earlier, generating incremental revenue at a lower CPA.

The Results

Sensational results, proven.

Corvidae’s AI rebuilt Menkind’s fragmented cross-device journeys, feeding the data automatically back into Google Ads to use for bidding.

These newly rebuilt customer journeys then allow association with data driven multitouch attribution models (MTAs) for advanced attribution insight into top of funnel customer activity

And by stitching AdTech identifiers like GCLIDS or FBCLIDS, AdTech bid automation using those same attributed journeys is also possible - leading to extraordinary results.

By training Smart Bidding algorithms on complete, accurate journey data - rather than the last-click fragment Google or Meta would otherwise see - a completely new valuation of auction value allows for radical performance improvement.

The results spoke for themselves.

There was such a clear disparity between the Corvidae campaigns and the originals that it was a no-brainer. When the CEO and MD see results like that, they're going to back it.

— Tom Phillips: Senior Digital Marketing Manager @ Gift Universe

Google Ads Automation Impact

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ROAS

+43%

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+55%

Conversions

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31%

CPA

Year on Year Growth

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+143%

Revenue

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+45%

ROAS

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-11%

CPA

After building trust in Corvidae automation, Gift Universe increased their ad spend by 68%. Usually, this level of scaling leads to diminishing returns and rising acquisition costs.

But with Corvidae’s journeys feeding Google Ads’ algorithm, Google’s own AI targeted auctions earlier in the customer journeys, and avoided overspending in last touch auctions.

This automation drove massive volume: an increase of +143% in revenue, while lowering CPA by 11%.

Corvidae supercharged Menkind’s ability to compete in online ad auctions and revamp affiliates leading to an improvement of +45% in ROAS.

Sensational results.

There was such a clear disparity between the Corvidae campaigns and the originals that it was a no-brainer to go for it.

— Tom Phillips: Senior Digital Marketing Manager @ Gift Universe

Building Trust

Trust, all the way to the board.

With Corvidae feeding accurate journey data back into Google Ads, the internal dynamic at Gift Universe shifted. Marketing could finally prove exactly what their investment was delivering at the board level.

"We have a big meeting every Monday afternoon with the MD, Ecommerce Director, and senior managers.

“Everyone's very tuned into it and happy with the results."

shares Tom.

"Corvidae has given people a lot more trust in my role and my team.”

We understood we needed attribution, but performance helps build trust. Ultimately performance in Paid powered by Corvidae gives trust in the whole piece.

Corvidae’s efficiency has given us a lot more confidence to push up budgets and add new campaigns.

Efficiency remains strong despite the increase in spends. We're going for a more aggressive marketing budget this year.

— Tom Phillips: Senior Digital Marketing Manager @ Gift Universe
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