An in-game advertising campaign for New Balance has “significantly increased” footfall to its stores in Australia, with the company saying it marked a “breakthrough” for the market.
Working with digital ad firm Azerion, offline attribution and data shop Lifesight and independent agency Yakkazoo which implemented the campaign, New Balance saw impressive results from the in-game ad spots.
The campaign ran for four weeks from November to December 2022 and showed that out of 1,000 engagements, 62 individuals visited one of the New Balance stores across Australia. Among these visitors, 58 per cent were within the 18-24 age range and spent up to half an hour inside the store.
The campaign was designed to raise awareness of New Balance’s “Industrial” shoe line with men aged between 18-44. Azerion reached a unique audience of 500,000 people via desktop and mobile high-impact display, securing an 89 per cent view-through rate for the New Balance video ads across 20,000 casual games.
Lifesight attribution pixels tracked ad exposure in cross-device environments and were matched to mobile IDs using the company’s proprietary identity graph of more than 13 million Australians. The campaign’s highest converting group was the Gen Z audience. A total of 1.5 million ad impressions were served and analysed, resulting in a total of 94,000 store visits.
“We saw a massive uplift in Gen Z audiences seeing the ads and then going to New Balance stores in Australia,” said Elizabeth Grant, director of operations & partnerships at Azerion, JAPAC.
“Brands want clear evidence of digital ad spend to in-store traffic increases, and we were able to do this via Lifesight’s attribution pixel technology. Having additional insight into which store locations customers visited means we’re now able to use these learnings to run lower funnel activity across our platform.”
“Through our partnership with Azerion and Lifesight, we discovered that in-game ads were exceptionally effective in converting young audiences into loyal customers. This finding underscores the power of the gaming environment and the invaluable role it plays in driving business success,” added Stephanie Pratt, director of client services at Yakkazoo.
