Case Study: A Win for Statewide Water Funding
November 25, 2019 by
Reaching sports fans to drive site traffic and a yes vote for a state ballot initiative to fund state water plans.
Customer Overview
A full-service digital advertising agency based in New York City that prides itself on running highly targeted campaigns had a challenge. Based on their capabilities, they were asked
to tackle a complex targeting request: help educate voters on a statewide ballot initiative. The agency used VISIT Local and their proprietary mobile product to build highly relevant
audiences and serve ads across the digital ecosystem.
Campaign Details
A group dedicated to funding a state water plan through a tax on sports betting wanted to promote the passage of a ballot proposition during the 2019 election cycle. If passed, the proposition would legalize sports betting in casinos across the state and online. A newly implemented tax on the sports betting proceeds would then fund the state’s water preservation efforts. Since water issues are relevant to all voters and the initiative would draw its funds from sports betting, the agency decided an ideal target audience to educate would be made up of sporting event-goers. The agency ultimately wanted to drive traffic to a website where voters could learn about the state’s water plan and the proposition itself.
To find sporting event-goers, the agency used VISIT Local to geofence stadiums and create their audience from the mobile ad IDs seen at specific sporting events. Focusing on seven games, the agency was able to build an audience of people for their retargeting efforts.
Challenges
Collecting a critical mass of mobile ad IDs for targeting purposes in a limited period of time was a key challenge. The account team at the agency needed to capture a meaningful audience size during the short time frame of the events. To do this, they looked back over the course of seven games at multiple stadiums, so they could capture a large enough audience to use in their outreach and education efforts.
Solution
The agency used their proprietary ad-serving platform to push ads to the mobile devices seen at the selected games. Based on their research, mobile ads perform twice as well as static banner ads. With their custom location-based audience from VISIT Local, they achieved 236,415 impressions between Oct. 6 and Oct. 29.
Results
The agency recorded 607 clicks from the audience they pulled from VISIT Local, which translates to a 0.26% CTR. They achieved a 0.5% CTR across all campaign efforts. Thanks to their targeting and education efforts, the ballot initiative passed by a clear margin.
