How Athlete’s Foot used programmatic TV to boost sales

Background

The Athlete’s Foot (TAF) wanted to raise awareness and sales for the launch of its new ASICS Nimbus model in Australia.

The target audience was identified as ‘fit-for-lifers’ who engage in active pursuits, as opposed to those who wear active wear to brunch.

TAF wanted to connect with this audience via television, but the brand’s traditional TV strategy mandated presence in costly primetime programming, and live sport TV rates were inflating while the client’s budget was challenged. In addition, younger audiences are consuming less traditional TV.

Execution

Media agency Initiative and Cadreon utilised the TubeMogul Programmatic TV solution to minimise waste and reach the ‘fit-for-life’ audience with digital-level granularity, while delivering to a requirement of being present in peak programming.

The PTV product used Nielsen CMV data to create a custom segment of individuals who had participated in, watched or attended AFL, Rugby Union, NRL, Soccer, Cricket, Golf or Surfing in the previous 12 months.

The TV viewing behaviour of this audience was then identified across all channels and day-parts using TubeMogul’s OzTAM and CMV fused data set.

Programmatic TV then married these with rates from the broadcasters to benchmark TAF’s historical CPM against this more specific and defined audience. It then proposed a new schedule that would be more efficient than the historical CPM while still respecting TAF’s requirements of national coverage and minimum delivery in peak programming.

Once live, daily delivery was monitored against the strategic audience target and optimisations were made to the spot schedule on the fly, to ensure the campaign met its delivery objectives. The campaign was executed in March 2016.

Results

The campaign delivered to all reach and frequency goals and increased year-over-year sales of the equivalent ASICS Nimbus campaign by 32.7 percent.

It resulted in:

• 25 percent improvement in TAF’s historical strategic CPM.
• 14 percent higher volume of on-target impressions to the strategic audience than originally forecast.
• Coverage in peak programming including the AFL and less than 15 percent between midnight and dawn.

The campaign was measured against standard metrics, along with a research study to evaluate the effectiveness of Programmatic TV versus Metro TV. The activity drove:

• 19 percent increase in purchase intent compared to standard Metro TV, 21 percent higher than unexposed.
• 43 percent higher product awareness when compared to standard Metro TV.
• 10 percent higher brand consideration when compared to standard Metro TV.
• 27 percent increase in consumer action (visit site, visit store, mention in social, or research further) compared to Metro TV.

The data-driven approach also provided a new lens with which to value TV spots and significantly increased the chances of connecting with the right audience, decreasing waste by over 23 percent from the standard TV-buying demo of males aged 25 to 54.