In today’s 24-7 lightning-fast digital age, the mere presence of good sports content isn’t enough. Sport24Feed, a prominent sports media platform, has made a revolutionary utilization of the outbound customer data to drive paid media campaigns. The result has been an uptick in ad performance as well as a more personalized experience for their diehard sports fans.
The Transition of Traditional to Data-Driven Advertising
In the old days, Sport24Feed depended on wide advertising campaigns to reach big audiences with generic messages. Though it was effective for establishing brand recognition, it wasn’t the most cost-effective way to allocate their marketing budget. As digital channels explode and people’s behaviors change, Sport24Feed knew they needed to get smarter — to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time.
First-Party Customer Data Collection and Its Use
The game changer? First-party data. Sport24Feed joined hands with Raptor Services to source meaningful feedback from their audience. Instead of third-party cookies, they monitored how people were working with their site: which sports they followed, which articles they read, even when they visited during live games or post-game analysis.
This enabled them to create 15+ unique audience segments. For instance, they could divide between football fans and basketball enthusiasts, or between readers partial to transfer news and those who like game highlights. This wealth of segmentation was the birth of hyper-targeted marketing.
Segmenting Audiences for Better Engagement
Breakdown of audiences and timing segments has let Sport24 feed the right content through their ads. A fan of football might encounter ads featuring breaking transfer rumors or live match updates, for example, while a basketball fan is targeted with content about their favorite teams. All of that personalization kept the ads from feeling like sales pitches and more like must-see updates for sports fans.
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Making Paid Media Smarter and More Effective
Sport24Feed’s media campaigns are now live on several of the largest platforms — Meta (Facebook and Instagram), on Google Ads, and with programmatic display networks. But the secret sauce is what they do with the customer data to inform these campaigns.
Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) allows ads to dynamically update their content based on who they’re being served to. Which means no more one-size-fits-all and people actually see (and pay attention to) ads about products and services they have a genuine interest in.
Impressive Results Speak for Themselves
The numbers speak for themselves on the strategy. “On dynamically optimized ads, they got a 250% increase on their Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and a 300% increase for their click-through rates (CTR) on Sport24Feed. More people not only clicked on the ads, but they also stayed on the site longer, engaging more with the content.
3C: More Value in the Customer Lifetime It also had a major victory when it increased customer lifetime value (LTV). The individualized tone prompted more return visits and influenced the conversion of the occasional reader to a loyal subscriber. That kind of long-term commitment is essential in the cutthroat world of sports media.
Behind the Scenes: Enablers of Success
A big part of this can be attributed to the incredible tools Sport24Feed employs. Raptor Services also has a critical role to play with its real-time syncing of audience data into ad platforms. This continuous optimization enables ads to stay in step with users’ interests over time.
The simple integration with Google Ad Manager and Meta Ad Managers means Sport24Feed can automate tailored campaigns on the fly, at speed and scale, without the need for manual management that can result in wasted man hours and resources.
Implications for Other Sports Media Brands
You The Light Race Sport24Feed’s tale is a lesson to which all brands venturing through the post-cookie digital landscape should pay attention. First-party data is not only privacy-friendly, but waaay smarter and more sustainable for keeping in touch with your audience. Brands that focus on building their own customer insights will benefit from more accurate targeting and significantly higher ad performance.
The small stuff is a start: observing user behavior, forming interesting audience segments and systematically matching up your media strategy to these truths. Continuous testing and optimization is the secret to unleashing growth.
The Future of Data-Driven Sports Media: What’s Next?
Sport24Feed isn’t stopping here. The potential for even greater personalization in the future, with predictive AI-based recommendations and real-time ad personalization. Fans will have the sports news they long for, and their experience will be that much richer and ad dollars that much more effective.
