FOX SPORTS
Fox Sports tested running reminder ads on Instagram along with its usual ad formats to remind people to tune into a women’s professional sports tournament, and saw a 6.55% lift in live event tune-in.
Fox Sports is the sports programming division of the Fox Corporation that is responsible for sports broadcasts carried by the Fox broadcast network, Fox Sports 1, and Fox Sports 2.
lift in live event tune-in when adding reminder ads to its usual strategies
reminder opt-in rate
Fox Sports wanted a way to remind people to tune in to an upcoming broadcast of a major women’s sporting event.
The goal of Fox Sports’ ad campaigns is to drive audience tune-in for its live sporting event broadcasts. Fox Sports heavily advertises these events a few weeks prior to the events themselves. The creative assets typically feature a team and/or athletes for that specific game, along with event date, time and a call-to-action encouraging people to tune-in.
For a campaign promoting the upcoming broadcast of the first game of an international women’s sport tournament, Fox Sports decided to take a test-and-learn approach by trying an ad format that it hadn’t used before, called reminder ads.
Reminder ads enable advertisers to promote events and bridge the gap between promotion time and launch time by allowing people to set and receive reminder notifications. People who see the ads and set reminders are then able to keep track of and tune into the moments and events that matter to them. These ads include a Remind Me call-to-action button, and people who click to opt in will receive notifications from Instagram leading up to the start of an event.
To understand the performance of this ad format, the team ran an A/B test that compared:
Cell A: Fox Sports’ usual campaign consisting of photo and video ads
Cell B: Fox Sports’ usual campaign plus reminder ads
The ad creative was identical in both cells, with the only difference being the Remind Me button in the reminder ads. Fox Sports’ agency MediaHub set up and activated the reminder ads test.
The team delivered all ads to US adults aged 18 and over—including those with an interest in sports, sports teams, sports leagues, international sports or international sporting tournaments—in Instagram feed and Stories. Fox Sports measured the results of the July 7–19, 2023 campaign using a third-party tune-in lift study via VideoAmp and a Meta brand lift study, which revealed:
6.55% lift in live event tune-in when adding reminder ads to its usual strategies
0.43% reminder opt-in rate