Sports Research amplifies new product launch with an Amazon Publisher Cloud-enhanced deal

Crafting a data-driven STV strategy

To address these challenges, Sports Research collaborated with Pacvue, their commerce platform partner, and Amazon Ads to develop a video strategy focused on expanding their customer base. The team concentrated on identifying inventory sources and deals that would effectively reach and engage new, high-value audiences.

At the core of their approach was an APC-enabled programmatic guaranteed (PG) deal, enhanced by custom Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) audiences, which included customers who had searched for hydration-related keywords in the last 30 days. Leveraging APC's Audience Collaborations feature, Sports Research activated a deal with a leading STV broadcaster by overlaying their custom AMC audiences against the publisher's deep content signals.

This approach unlocked premium supply, enriched by the unique overlap of publisher data, Sports Research's first-party signals, and Amazon Ads exclusive retail media insights. The result was a powerful combination of reach and relevance, helping Sports Research to efficiently introduce their Hydrate offering to new, relevant customers through secure signal collaboration and advanced audience insights, instead of relying on traditional ad identifiers. This approach not only enhanced the precision of their audience reach but also ensured the campaign's effectiveness in an evolving addressability landscape.

Madi Hammett from Pacvue shared her perspective on the collaboration: "The partnership across ourselves, APC and Sports Research drove great success in testing new capabilities for video initiatives. By customizing our audience targeting and aligning to specialized inventory sources within APC, we were able to see efficient, scalable delivery and ad engagement for the Hydrate video campaigns."

Achieving exceptional results

The integration of custom AMC audiences within the APC-enhanced PG deal proved to be a game-changer, yielding results that exceeded Sports Research's expectations. Using 56% less spend compared to the control, the APC-enhanced deal successfully reached the intended audience at a rate approximately 1.8 times higher than the benchmark, while also driving at least 51% more efficient costs in reaching the desired users.¹ This demonstrated the power of combining Sports Research's proprietary AMC audiences with publishers' exclusive deep content signals to curate highly relevant, premium supply.

The campaign's success extended beyond these primary metrics. Despite the lower spend, the APC-enhanced deal outperformed the control order, driving 43% more impressions during the flight.¹ This showcases APC's ability to efficiently expand audience reach at scale. Furthermore, the campaign maintained a similar purchase rate to the control order, highlighting cost-efficiency in driving conversions.

The combination of expanded reach, improved cost-efficiency, and robust conversion rates showcased the full-funnel impact of APC-enhanced deals, allowing Sports Research to maximize their advertising budget while reaching a broader audience. As Michael Schwartz from Sports Research noted, "The results of this campaign exceeded our expectations. With APC-optimized deals, we achieved cost-efficient reach and connected with entirely new customer segments, unlocking incremental growth opportunities for our Hydrate product line."

Future implications for STV advertising

As the digital advertising landscape continues to evolve, strategies that combine the precision of programmatic with the quality of guaranteed deals are likely to play an increasingly important role in successful campaign execution. The ability to leverage custom AMC audiences within APC represents a significant advancement, allowing advertisers to create more bespoke and effective media plans.

The Sports Research case study demonstrates how a strategic approach to STV advertising that leverages advanced technologies like APC can help brands reach relevant customers in a cost-efficient, impactful way.