Stubhub Hits a Home Run - Outperforming ROAS Goals by 37% During Major League Baseball Season

Engaging Ads for the Major League Baseball Play-Offs

StubHub was looking for a way to leverage video to create more engaging content during the Major League Baseball (MLB) playoffs and World Series, as this was a big ticket revenue driver. They traditionally used image-based formats including static imagery and carousel ads in their digital marketing efforts. How could their team create engaging ads for the countless permutations of play-offs that could occur? They didn’t want to manually create match-up specific creative for each game, as this would not only be time consuming but also put a lot of strain on their design team.

Smartly.io Automated Ads Create Countless Match-Up Visuals

StubHub tested the incrementality of video by first running their standard evergreen dynamic ad campaigns using the carousel format on Facebook for MLB. Collaborating with the Smartly.io Managed Service and Creative Studio, they tested and ran a new MLB prospecting campaign alongside this, using the Smartly.io Video Template tool and feed-based Automated Ads solution to ensure that ads for the correct match-up ran at all times without any manual work. They created custom campaigns with a dynamic video asset to highlight post season games to two different user groups across both Facebook and Instagram feed ad placements:

1. Prospects who had never visited the StubHub website

2. Users who had visited the StubHub website but whom never completed a purchase

The same creative was also tested on Instagram stories. During the World Series, StubHub manually increased their budget five-fold to drive conversions. This was in addition to running their evergreen dynamic ad campaigns, which usually made up a big part of their digital marketing spend.

Video Outperforms Carousel Across Key Metrics

The video campaign was a huge hit and outperformed carousel across key metrics including CTR, CVR and CPA. Specifically, Return on Ad Spend exceeded its evergreen goal by 37%. Additionally, Click Through Rate was two times higher than standard campaigns. Cost Per Acquisition was very efficient as well with a 34% and 24% reduction compared to their core prospecting and retargeting campaigns, respectively.