The perfect blend: How Nescafé Sugar Free used programmatic precision to brew a brand uplift

This post is sponsored by Magnite.

In an era of fragmented viewing habits, capturing attention requires more than just reach – it demands precision. As audiences shift towards streaming and on-demand content, programmatic activation has become the vital link between scale, personalisation, and creativity.

A successful collaboration between Nestlé Philippines, WPP Media, and Magnite for Nescafé Sugar Free highlighted how adtech innovation, combined with rich audience insights and a thoughtful creative execution, could elevate omnichannel strategies into a high-impact delivery – engaging the right consumers, at the right time, across the right platforms.

We spoke with Emm Ordinanza , VP and head of media integration, Nestlé Philippines, and JP Salustiano, principal partner, client leadership, Openmind, to break down the key learnings behind the success of this programmatic campaign.

The challenge: Connecting in a fragmented market

With 96 million Filipinos active on the open internet, the scale for digital connection is massive. However, attention is fragmented. According to Magnite’s “Streams and Screens: The Philippines” research, 71% of Southeast Asian consumers now stream on CTV, often across six or more services. Filipino audiences are also moving towards video, music, and gaming – premium environments that offer lower ad saturation and higher attention than traditional social feeds.

For Nescafé Sugar Free, the challenge was finding and re-engaging health-conscious coffee drinkers across these diverse platforms without losing message consistency. In a category where habit is everything, the brand needed to be present at the exact moment a consumer was considering their next wellness-oriented choice.

“Our insights showed that coffee drinkers are actively seeking healthier options, and our campaign was designed to address Nestlé’s business challenge in a highly competitive market,” Ordinanza said.

“The question was: how do we truly connect? Partners such as Magnite were crucial in empowering us to reach our audience with precision and relevance.”

The strategy: Powering data-driven creativity across screens

To ensure scale, while maintaining relevant contextual audience targeting, Magnite helped Nescafé curate a premium streaming marketplace – anchoring the strategy with contextually relevant genre-targeted pause ads on WeTV, audio via Spotify and Lotame’s robust audience data.

Data also played a key role in unlocking greater creativity throughout the campaign. By using audience insights and contextual signals, Nescafé connected with consumers in ways that felt natural and relevant to how they consume content.

“We chose channels that fitted naturally into consumers’ lives,” Salustiano said.

“WeTV offered the right content context, while Spotify extended reach into daily routines such as workouts and coffee breaks. We selected these channels from a full-funnel perspective to capitalise on each partner’s specific strengths, ensuring deliberate and relevant messaging, and a unified ecosystem view.”

A key innovation was the use of programmatic genre-targeted pause ads on WeTV. By syncing ad delivery with publisher first-party data and content metadata, Nescafé placed tailored creatives within health-related moments across the drama, anime, and entertainment genres. Pause ads ensured non-disruptive messaging during moments of high focus, and this contextual alignment resulted in an 11% uplift in brand awareness.

To maintain this momentum, this was complemented by Spotify audio ads targeted to playlists such as Coffee Break and Adulting Millennials, helping the brand stay relevant from morning to night.

By tapping into a curated streaming marketplace and Lotame’s robust audience data, Nescafé moved beyond basic demographics to target high-intent signals such as purchase history and lifestyle app usage, ensuring the brand appeared where health-conscious audiences were the most active.

This integrated strategy proved that when technical precision meets creative execution, brands can reach the right audience in the right mindset, delivering both scale and meaningful impact.

Embracing the power of programmatic

Programmatic technology was the engine behind this unified, data-driven delivery. In a fragmented media landscape, maintaining relevance at scale is the ultimate challenge and the ultimate necessity. Magnite’s research reinforced this – finding that 87% of Filipino viewers engage more with ads tailored to their interests, while 80% feel a stronger connection to content aligned with local culture and content.

Against this backdrop, programmatic enabled Nescafé to activate across channels with precision. By syncing audience data with contextual signals, the brand reached consumers in moments that mattered most, facilitating creative executions such as genre-targeted streaming ads without sacrificing efficiency or scale.

“In a fragmented world, we have to think programmatically,” Salustiano said. “More advertisers are moving towards a full-funnel approach, and programmatic empowers that execution by orchestrating platforms to work together with performance optimised in real time to meet business objectives.”

Added Ordinanza: “For Nestlé, this interconnected strategy was about more than just targeting, it was about real-time optimisation. With Magnite, we got live insights and a seamless omnichannel delivery.”

Salustiano also said: “Magnite was crucial to activation – helping us integrate platforms, deliver precision targeting, and optimising in real time."

Delivering results: Collaboration and innovation

The campaign’s success came down to a tight partnership between brand, agency, and technology partner. By working as a single team, Nestlé, WPP Media, and Magnite were able to turn a complex strategy into a smooth execution. The results moved beyond traditional media metrics to drive tangible business growth and significant brand outcomes.

• 97% Brand consideration: Achieving strong resonance among exposed audiences.
• 11% Awareness uplift: Driven by the innovative use of WeTV’s genre-targeted pause ads.
• 19% Imagery boost: Strengthening Nescafé’s perception as a premium, healthier coffee option.
• Proven sales growth: Demonstrating how high-funnel precision can drive bottom-line impact.

“Every form of innovation carries some risk,” Salustiano said. “But with Magnite’s capabilities and the trust built from past campaigns, we were confident to test new formats, and the results proved it worked.”

The collaboration proved that when technical precision meets creative execution, brands can reach the right audience in the right mindset, delivering both scale and meaningful impact. Ultimately, Nescafé Sugar Free has set a new regional benchmark for programmatic advertising in Southeast Asia – showing that when brand strategy and adtech are in sync, creativity gets smarter and precision drives performance.

The author is Priyanka Bajaj, head of demand – Asia, Magnite.