Challenge

In May 2022, Socios.com launched a new campaign which included the introduction of their new brand ambassadors who are global football superstars. In line with their TV ads, we ran strategic complementary cross-platform activity, using YouTube and Facebook.

Facebook Ads was utilised as a combined higher and lower funnel activation, focusing on brand campaigns alongside Automated App Ads campaigns (AAA). The former’s goal was to drive increased awareness and the latter’s to target users most likely to install and convert to registration. YouTube activities were solely focused on brand awareness to build a bridge between above-the-line and below-the-line efforts.

Considerations

We initially ran with standard app ads on Facebook so we could maintain more control over the ads and targeting. However, this approach yielded above-target CPI and CPR (our two main KPIs) by 126% and 350%, respectively.

Meta was used to drive increased awareness and  to target users most likely to install and convert to registration. YouTube activities were solely focused on brand awareness to build a bridge between above-the-line and below-the-line efforts.

Solution 

• Utilise Facebook’s algorithmic capabilities by transitioning to the Automated App Ads campaign format.
  • Sacrificing targeting and bidding controls in lieu of a high level of machine learning and automation, we turned instead to creative as our main lever of control.
• We opted for more educational content which would help convert an audience to register, with key messages the brand wanted to convey, such as their features and USPs.
• Alongside Facebook, we complemented TV ads using a YouTube campaign optimising to a view rate goal.
  • This was done by ensuring the correct audience viewed in the right formats. To do this, we split our audience segments into in-market, affinity and customer intent, to test which video formats were most efficient for which audience behaviours (those that deliver the highest view rate).

This was done to help bridge the gap between ATL and BTL activities, allowing us to confidently bid higher on customer intent and in market audience buckets (compared to affinity audiences) to ensure that our budget was most effectively optimised towards the audience most likely to use the product.

Results

• We had benchmarked 31.9% view rate as a success for Youtube Ads from StrikeSocial YouTube data report.
  • We found that driving an in-market audience to view the ad resulted in an above benchmark view rate of 44.91%, which was an impressive 37% improvement on the benchmark. 
• Reach and Frequency delivered a strong cost per estimated ad recall lift of €0.04, which was great for the first brand awareness campaign we had run.
• Testing AAA as the main driver towards registration, we realised that using Facebook’s algorithm and just having creatives as a control improved our CPR by ~50% and also the CPI by ~50%.