How National Express Converted TV Traffic Into Amazon Sales On Black Friday

National Express Inc. is a long-established direct response company founded in 1982, operating across television, direct mail, retail, catalog, and ecommerce channels.

On Amazon, the company manages a diverse portfolio of home and kitchen products including food preparation tools, kitchen gadgets, decorative household items, and bedding products such as pillows.

A defining strength of National Express is its television merchandising engine. National TV campaigns introduce products to a large consumer audience, often creating immediate interest that drives shoppers online to search for those items.

Because these campaigns generate demand before shoppers ever reach Amazon, the marketplace frequently becomes the final step in the purchase journey—making effective demand capture critical during peak retail events like Black Friday.

The Challenge

National Express entered the holiday season with strong consumer demand driven by national television merchandising campaigns. These campaigns regularly prompted shoppers to search for the brand’s products on Amazon.

However, Amazon advertising had historically been managed conservatively during peak demand periods. Campaign budgets often capped out during the busiest shopping hours, limiting visibility precisely when consumer interest was highest.

As a result, although television campaigns were successfully generating awareness and product demand, Amazon advertising was not always positioned to fully capture that traffic.

The opportunity was clear: if advertising investment could scale alongside television-driven demand, Amazon could function as a far more effective conversion engine during the brand’s most important retail moments.

Why Quartile

National Express needed a system capable of responding instantly to spikes in shopper demand created by its television campaigns.

When TV merchandising drives product awareness, Amazon search traffic can increase rapidly—particularly during high-traffic events such as Black Friday. Traditional campaign management approaches rely on static budgets and manual bid adjustments, which often cannot react quickly enough to these fluctuations.

Quartile’s automation provided the precision required to solve this challenge. By continuously analyzing campaign performance signals—including keyword activity, traffic trends, and conversion behavior—Quartile dynamically optimized bids and campaign delivery throughout the day.

This automation ensured that National Express maintained strong visibility during the highest-intent shopping moments while protecting efficiency metrics such as Advertising Cost of Sales (ACOS) and Total Advertising Cost of Sale (TACOS).

Instead of reacting to demand after it appeared, Quartile enabled National Express to scale advertising performance in real time as demand surged.

The Solution

To capture more demand during the Black Friday season, Quartile implemented a strategy designed to synchronize Amazon advertising with National Express’ television merchandising calendar.

Campaign structures were first optimized to prioritize hero products actively supported by television campaigns. These products historically experienced the largest spikes in search activity when consumers searched for them online after seeing television promotions.

Quartile’s automation platform then continuously optimized bidding and campaign delivery across Sponsored Products and Sponsored Brands campaigns.

As search traffic increased during peak shopping periods, the system automatically adjusted bids and investment levels to maintain competitive placements on high-intent keywords. When performance signals indicated strong conversion activity, the platform dynamically allocated more investment toward the highest-performing campaigns, products, and search terms.

This automated optimization ensured that advertising visibility scaled alongside demand without requiring constant manual intervention.

To strengthen brand presence in search results, Sponsored Brands Video campaigns were also launched for television-supported products. These placements reinforced brand recognition among shoppers already familiar with the products through television advertising and helped improve engagement during high-traffic search sessions.

Together, these optimizations allowed Amazon advertising to operate as a scalable conversion engine for television-driven demand.

Results & Impact

By aligning Amazon advertising with television merchandising campaigns and leveraging Quartile’s automated optimization platform, National Express significantly improved its ability to capture peak-season demand.

Across the November Black Friday period, the strategy delivered measurable performance improvements across key business metrics.

• Amazon orders increased 27% YoY, demonstrating stronger demand capture during peak shopping periods

• Units sold grew 25% YoY, indicating higher shopper conversion across television-supported products

• Amazon sales improved 17% YoY, reflecting more effective demand capture across the product catalog

• Black Friday week delivered approximately 28% YoY sales growth, marking the strongest performance window of the year

These results confirmed that synchronizing Amazon advertising with external demand—and enabling that strategy with automated optimization—can significantly improve seasonal performance while maintaining disciplined advertising efficiency.

Ongoing Value & Future State

Following the success of the Black Friday strategy, Amazon has become an even more important conversion channel within National Express’ broader marketing ecosystem.

Quartile continues to support campaign optimization through automated bidding and ongoing performance analysis, helping the brand maintain strong visibility for television-supported products while protecting advertising efficiency.

With this framework in place, National Express is well positioned to capture demand during future high-traffic events such as Prime Day and the holiday season.