A co-op of 26 Godfather’s Pizza franchises drove online sales at a rate of six times their media spend through FBX.
Working on behalf of the co-op, Nebraska agency SKAR enlisted Varick Media Management (VMM), which it had worked with previously, to help run its coverage through FBX.
Digital advertising is relatively new to the co-op’s marketing mix. Godfather’s Pizza’s director of marketing, Jan Sammons, said these initiatives began in 2013. “So far we have been very pleased with the results of the campaign,” Sammons said. “(We) are looking forward to continuing to enhance our traditional advertising efforts with digital.”
VMM president Paul Rostkowski said the agency chose FBX because the size of its environment drove down costs. “It’s one of the largest, if not the largest, marketplace that’s available today,” he said. “Because of its size, the impression cost tends to be lower because there are so many users. The less expensive the ad impressions, the more likely agencies are able to meet target ROIs.”
This wasn’t SKAR’s first foray with Facebook advertising, but SKAR’s media director, Jenn Bunnell, said initial returns for advertisements placed on Facebook, but not through its exchange, weren’t great. “We weren’t seeing overly impressive numbers because we track the revenue, not just the impressions and the clicks,” she said.
FBX, however, enabled retargeting, meaning when a person visited the Godfather’s website, her browser was cookied and VMM could fire off a relevant display ad once she logged into Facebook.
VMM used age and geolocation data to reach consumers in the 18-54 age bracket living in nearby Nebraska counties. It drew on expertise from past campaigns that centered on tight geotargeting elements; timing and recency were two key factors for retargeting.
VMM pixeled Godfather’s Pizza’s website, which then drops a cookie onto consumers’ browsers. VMM looked specifically for cookie-dense consumers and bid for ad placement on the auction-based FBX. Consumers who visited Facebook saw a promotion for two Godfather’s pizzas for $10. To trace the customer path to purchase, VMM used a third-party ad server and DFA did all the syncing to measure attribution.
“It was amazing to see the difference between placing ads directly,” Bunnell said. “Digital in general was initially a hard sell, but (the client) understood that it’s where the eyeballs and the usage is. Now that we have an ad server where we’re able to track sales, when we break it down, we can show that the Facebook ads are the ones that help reform all the other ads. Based on how much we’re spending we’re getting the highest return for our investment.”
One piece of data that may have improved this case, according to Rostkowski, is insight into shopping cart size. “Was their bill $15 or $100?” Rostkowski explained. “Essentially, if we can find people who are spending more rather than those who are spending less in real time, we can better optimize ad spend.”
With the majority of Godfather’s Pizza’s ad spend still going into TV, investment in digital ad buying will, at the very least, continue. Sammons noted, “Our current plans are to include digital alongside our traditional print and broadcast advertising throughout 2014.”
