Cracking the ‘Generation Mute’ code: how a 3-person team transformed Netia’s sales

We have great news – WPP Media Poland has officially been shortlisted for the upcoming European Search Awards! This marks our fourth consecutive year on this prestigious stage.

Our tight-knit, three-person team is especially proud to be recognized in the highly competitive Best Use of Search – B2C (PPC): Large category for our work with Netia, one of Poland’s leading telecommunications providers.

Here is the behind-the-scenes story of how we had to completely rethink our digital sales approach during the most critical trading period of the year.

Perfect storm

Right before the crucial September-November trading peak, we encountered a complex, multi-layered market shift. First, unexpected communication barriers emerged. Changes in telecommunications filtering algorithms began heavily affecting traditional outbound telemarketing channels. For a business model that historically utilized call centers to finalize those crucial contracts, this shift required a rapid operational pivot to maintain seamless service activations.

Simultaneously, national inflation triggered intense price competition among major telecom giants. We were operating in an environment where we needed to maintain strict profitability margins, all while our competitors were aggressively slashing their prices.

Then came the demographic challenge. Our strategy required expanding our reach into younger audiences, specifically “Generation Mute” (Gen Z). Market research paints a clear picture here: upwards of 75% of these users experience significant phone anxiety. This meant that our standard callback strategies were highly inefficient for this segment.

Finally, strict GDPR protocols naturally prevented the direct upload of offline conversion data. This effectively blinded our Smart Bidding algorithms to actual, finalized sales. We needed to design a completely new digital purchase path from scratch.

Record-breaking profitability and scalable growth

Instead of focusing on “soft leads” (like form submissions), our team pivoted the entire account focus to optimize for what really mattered: verified, signed contracts.

The results? By the end of the peak season, we achieved a +35% overall Sales Growth. But the real win was the financial efficiency:

• We drove the CPL down by 36% YoY, easily beating our ambitious goals, and generating tens of thousands of high-quality leads primed for conversion.
• We heavily promoted a new, 100% digital e-contract. This specific pathway generated a 55% relative uplift in verified Activation Rates compared to historical data, naturally filtering out “window shoppers”.
• Amidst fierce pricing battles across the industry, we maintained our CPA well below our strict target thresholds. This secured a substantial, double-digit profit margin buffer on every single signed contract.

The team behind the success

Being shortlisted for the European Search Awards validates the deep analytical work and rapid strategic pivots executed by our specialized unit. Here is what this recognition means to the architects behind the campaign:

Pavel Kryvitski, SEM Expert:“From day one, I knew this wasn’t just a PPC campaign, but a necessary business transformation. Securing this nomination proves that when a compact, agile team unites around a bold strategic vision, we can outmanoeuvre massive market challenges and rewrite the rules.”

Julia Gruszczyk, SEM Specialist: “Cracking the ‘Generation Mute’ code was an amazing creative puzzle. It proves that raw empathy and unconventional ideas are just as powerful as algorithms. We listened to our audience’s unspoken needs and built a digital experience they actually wanted to use.”

Dominik Jancz, SEM Specialist:“I like to think I’m the reality check behind our bold ideas! While we pushed creative boundaries, shifting our reporting strictly to verified offline sales was our secret weapon. Turning daily data into hard, undeniable profit is what makes this team unstoppable.”

The 3 steps that got us there

We decided to ignore some industry norms and implemented three key strategies:

1. The “e-contract” for Gen Z: since phone calls were a barrier, we simply removed them. We quickly shifted a significant portion of our media budget to promote a 100% digital-only “E-contract. By targeting Gen Z with frictionless landing pages, we gave them exactly what they preferred: a seamless, entirely online transaction.
2. Connecting the data (privacy-first profit bridge): to solve the GDPR data-blindness issue, we engineered a secure data bridge. By matching non-PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data with our tech stack in a privacy-safe way, we allowed our SA 360 Smart Bidding to optimize bids based on actual signed contracts, rather than just top-of-funnel clicks.
3. Splitting the accounts: while the PPC industry trend is to consolidate accounts to feed AI algorithms more data, we went the opposite way. We built a custom ecosystem based on a strict “One Business Line = One Account” rule. We shared the overall learning signals but strictly separated the budgets. This gave us granular control to aggressively bid on high-margin products while instantly cutting spend on low-efficiency ones.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without Netia’s trust and openness to try new things. We absolutely cannot wait to join our fellow finalists and celebrate the brightest minds in search marketing at the ESA ceremony!

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About WPP Media: We are WPP’s global media collective, built for the AI era. We bring the best platform, people, and partners together to create innovative solutions that deliver unparalleled growth for brands – in every market, every day.