The Situation
Entain, an international sports betting and gambling company, wanted to understand the effectiveness of podcast ad creatives designed with humorous messaging and tones, relevant themes, and sound effects on achieving campaign KPIs for their brand Bwin. Bwin is one of Europe’s leading online sports betting brands with key markets in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, and Spain.
For their first podcast campaign, Entain worked with AdsWizz to target users during the Euro Cup, encouraging them to place bets on the BWin app. By running the ads across Sports podcasts, AdsWizz was able to reach this core audience.
Over the course of the campaign, Entain partnered with AdsWizz and Veritonic to conduct a brand lift study measuring the impact that the podcast ads have on driving awareness and favorability of their Bwin brand. Veritonic is a leading audio research and analytics partner.
The Solution
This brand lift study targeted adults 18 years and older in Germany who meet the following criteria: listen to podcasts every day or most days, about once per week, several times per month, or about once per month, and that are listeners of the following genres: News/Politics, Business/Finance, Health/Fitness, Self-Help/Productivity, Comedy/Humor, Pop Culture, True Crime, Education, or Other.
Ad testing was used to evaluate the characteristics of podcast ad creatives to determine how effective they are at driving lifts in brand metrics and attributes. Audience targeting parameters were put in place to ensure Bwin’s ads reach an engaged audience of frequent podcast listeners who are interested in certain genres. High impact German-language creatives with humorous messaging, sports themes, and sports-related music were also used for this campaign.
The Results
The podcast ad creatives effectively generated lifts in awareness, favorability, and intent for Bwin. There was a +20ppt lift in awareness among the total exposed audience, and a +15ppt lift in awareness among the total live events exposed audience. There was also a +10ppt lift in awareness among the total exposed users of Entain.
Brand favorability scores were strong especially among male respondents who drove a double-digit lift. There was a +6ppt lift in favorability among the total exposed audience, and a +9ppt lift in favorability among the total live events exposed audience. Both awareness and favorability remained strong among those who recently watched live sporting events on TV or in-person or recently used sports betting apps.
Respondents 35-54 years-old saw a +10ppt lift in intent.
Veritonic’s brand lift study highlighted the effectiveness of mentioning Bwin’s brand name multiple times throughout the ad spot. Upbeat music and inclusion of songs that have national appeal were proven to drive performance metrics. This campaign used sports-related messaging and music to increase relevancy and message association, and German-language creatives to speak to their target audience in a key market. The inclusion of humorous messaging was successful in fostering an emotional connection with podcast listeners. These results demonstrated the importance of relevant and engaging podcast ad creatives to drive awareness, favorability, and intent.
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