Washington Capitals
Case study: AOL boosts ticket sales for Washington Capitals with targeting and custom creative
Challenge
With five pro-sports teams in the DC area, the Washington Capitals needed something more than a winning season to stand out from the crowd. They needed to outshine the the Redskins, Wizards, Nationals and DC United in the minds of the ticket-buying public.
They came to AOL Advertising for help increasing brand awareness, attracting new fans and bringing old ones back to the Verizon Center.
Solution
AOL Advertising combined massive reach with targeting solutions to spread the Caps' brand message.
Geographic targeting honed in on the Caps' local audience and Washington DC-area sports fans without limiting reach across the internet.
Advertiser LeadBack targeted current and prospective fans that had already clicked on a Caps ad or had been to the Caps website in the last 30 days.
In addition, our in-house creative team designed a set of ads to run concurrently with those the Caps supplied.
Results
AOL Advertising successfully increased brand awareness and boosted ticket sales, reaching 256K unique visitors daily and delivering over 19M impressions on 500+ websites.
To engage the Caps' target audience and build awareness for the team, our in-house designers built an interactive hockey game and a scrolling ticker that displayed upcoming games and events.
The rich media banners designed in-house gave the Caps' messaging a huge boost as evidenced by the incredible lift in click-through rates.
Creative
You must have the most recent version of the Flash plugin to view this animation. Click here to download and install it.
| Campaign Type | Lift in Click-Through Rates (AOL Advertising Vs. Client Creatives) |
|---|---|
| Leadback | 15x |
| Geo-Targeted | 27x |
| Aggregate | 21x |
Client Feedback
"AOL Advertising's network has given the Capitals an unprecedented ability to reach a fragmented fan base and help drive ticket sales and overall brand awareness in a very challenging market. It provides us flexibility to simultaneously create multiple campaigns, across multiple audience bases, and test which one[s] best drive ticket sales. This sort of iterative process allows us to learn more about the effectiveness of our advertising and be much more analytical in measuring the return on investment."
- Tim McDermott, CMO Washington Capitals