● Case Study · Bio-Oil Canada
How an Iconic Skincare Brand Found Its Next Generation of Customers on Prime Video
How a heritage skincare brand bet big on Prime Video and turned streaming into genuine new-to-brand growth
84%
Of purchasers on the flagship Prime Video campaign were new to Bio-Oil
+241%
Growth in brand share of voice, year over year
27K+
Ad-attributed branded searches for Bio-Oil on Amazon
01 — THE PROBLEM
Bio-Oil is one of the most recognized skincare brands in the world, a product that has lived in Canadian medicine cabinets for decades. But recognition is not the same as growth. For a heritage brand, the shoppers who already know and love the product are already buying it. Real growth has to come from somewhere harder: people who have never put Bio-Oil in their cart.
That was the challenge in front of Karla Rende, VP of Marketing at Advanced Innovations Inc., the company behind Bio-Oil in Canada, together with Accrue, the team that runs the brand’s Amazon advertising. The mandate was awareness at national scale: reach Canadian women 18 plus, in both official languages, from a globally consistent creative library. The traditional playbook for that mandate is broad display and search. The problem is that attention has moved. Canadian audiences now spend their evenings inside streaming environments where a skincare brand has historically had no presence at all.
So the question became a sharper one: could streaming do more than build awareness? Could it find genuinely new customers for a decades-old brand?
02 — THE STRATEGY
The answer was a first for the brand. Rather than treat streaming as a test line item, the plan made Prime Video ads the flagship of the entire media buy and built a full streaming ecosystem around it. It came together as a real collaboration between Karla and the Accrue team: brand-side conviction to make a bold bet, matched with the Amazon DSP execution and measurement to build it, run it, and prove what it delivered.
A phased rollout, not a big bang
The investment was staged rather than committed all at once
FALL 2025
Amazon DSP foundations laid, with an early commitment ahead of the new year to secure sign-on incentives.
JANUARY 2026
Flagship Prime Video campaigns launch nationally, with bilingual English and French creative running from day one.
MARCH 2026
Streaming TV expansion test across broader connected TV inventory.
JULY 2026
A new summer campaign launches on Prime Video, opening the second half of the year.
THROUGH DEC 2026
A committed full-year plan spanning Prime Video, Netflix, Streaming TV, online video on top beauty publisher sites, and DSP display.
From one audience to an audience architecture
The brand had been working from a single broad demographic. Together, the team replaced it with layers.
In-market shoppers
Body moisturizers, skin care products, facial serums, body lotions
Lifestyle segments
From budget-conscious to premium skin care buyers, plus healthy-lifestyle audiences
Streaming behavior
Romance-genre affinity, top trending titles on Prime Video
Seasonal moments
A dedicated Valentine’s Day Streaming TV placement
Quebec, fully included
A distinct French-language track with dedicated FR creative
Value beyond the media
Because the commitment came early and at scale, the plan also unlocked negotiated added-value incentives directly from Amazon, stretching the impact of every working media dollar.
03 — THE MEASURE
The goal was awareness with a purpose: reach Canadian women 18 plus, in English and French, and turn that reach into new demand for the brand. Because Prime Video inventory is non-clickable by design, Accrue measured success the way upper-funnel campaigns should be measured.
Reach
Attention
New-to-brand purchase behavior
Downstream branded search
From one audience to an audience architecture
The brand had been working from a single broad demographic. Together, the team replaced it with layers.
04 — WHAT WE LEARNED
84%
INSIGHT 01 · NEW-TO-BRAND PURCHASERS
The awareness investment created customers, not just impressions.
On the flagship Prime Video campaign, 84% of shoppers who went on to purchase were new to the brand. Across all Prime Video activity, more than 8 in 10 purchasers were first-time Bio-Oil buyers, and roughly 80% of attributed sales came from customers the brand had never converted before. For a heritage brand, this is the hardest kind of growth, and exactly what the streaming investment was built to deliver.
4.9M
NSIGHT 02 · CORE PARENT AUDIENCES
The campaign reached the exact customer the brand was made for.
The ten highest-performing in-market audiences were all expecting and new parents, the shoppers who turn to Bio-Oil for scars and stretch marks. Those segments alone delivered 4.9 million impressions and more than 2,400 purchases. And the two Frenchlanguage audiences out-converted every other age and gender group in the program, proof that the dedicated Quebec track was more than a translation.
27K+
INSIGHT 03 · BRANDED SEARCH ON AMAZON
The living-room screen sent people to the search bar.
The program drove more than 27,000 ad-attributed branded searches for Bio-Oil on Amazon, nearly 24,000 of them from the Prime Video campaigns alone. Shoppers watched a non-clickable ad on their TV, then opened Amazon and typed the brand’s name themselves.
97%+
INSIGHT 04 · VIDEO COMPLETION RATE
Audiences are not skipping.
The 30-second hero spots recorded completion rates above 97% in both English and French. When the creative plays on the biggest screen in the house, people watch it to the end.
25–35%
INSIGHT 05 · EFFICIENCY VS. PLAN
Premium attention came in under plan.
Across Prime Video activity to date, effective rates landed roughly 25 to 35% below what was planned for the year, meaning the budget reached meaningfully further than forecast
05 — THE OUTCOME
BY THE NUMBERS
SEP 2025 – JUL 2026
84%
Impressions across streaming & display
27.6M
Impressions on Prime Video
32M+
Completed video views
+241%
Share-of-voice growth, YoY
Between September 2025 and mid-July 2026, the program delivered 33.5 million impressions across streaming and display, including 27.6 million on Prime Video and more than 32 million completed video views, placing Bio-Oil inside the shows Canadians were already watching. It also reshaped the brand’s standing in its category. Bio-Oil’s share of voice grew 241% year over year, a sharp rise in how much of the category’s attention the brand now commands. Most importantly, it answered the question that set the whole program in motion. Streaming did not just make a familiar brand more visible. It found people the brand had never reached: more than 8 in 10 shoppers who purchased after seeing the Prime Video campaigns were new to Bio-Oil, and tens of thousands of viewers went on to search for the brand by name. Bio-Oil now enters the back half of 2026 with an always-on presence across Prime Video, Netflix, and Streaming TV, a layered audience strategy that gets smarter with every flight, and its newest campaign live as of July 1st. It is a foundation Advanced Innovations and Accrue continue to build on together, in pursuit of the two things a heritage brand needs most: lasting brand awareness and genuine new-to-brand growth.
Advanced Innovations Inc. and Accrue partner on Bio-Oil Canada’s Amazon advertising
