New Life for the Sweepstakes Ad

How One Company is Making Old New Again With a Unique Take on Sweepstakes-Style Ads

And the Unbelievable Results They’re Getting

Sweepstakes have been an undeniable driver of growth, particularly on social media. Brands ranging from health and fitness to snack foods to body care have tapped into the impressive power of the sweepstakes. With the possibility of winning something special (a spa day for two) or something truly unique (free pizza for a year), you can drive impressive clicks and conversions.

But just getting that attention is no longer enough. Social media, paid ads and video marketing have all evolved. The core premise that drives that evolution, however, hasn’t changed much. 

Consider that 83% of users in one survey, when asked what they would do to win a reward, answered that they would watch a branded video: 

Source: MarketingCharts/HelloWorld

Although this information is from a survey conducted in 2018, as you might imagine, the growth of video marketing has only increased exponentially since then, putting even higher expectations on marketers and creatives to work together to extract valuable data from users in an attempt to not only create ads that resonate with them, but to also better align the brand with what customers want and expect from them. 

It’s a tall order to fill, but one company is making it happen. 

Theatre Audience Takes Center Stage

Theatre Audience was born out of a need to take video marketing further. By leveraging the targeted marketing options available in social media and the allure of a sweepstakes prize, Theatre Audience has developed technology behind-the-scenes that monitors, records and learns from what users do in order to help advertisers better refine their creative and media ads to appeal to that group. 

For example, you may not think that beauty fashionistas would care much about the spooky characters in The Addams Family, but as an example, such a test could be carried out to determine if this audience would watch the movie and recommend it to others. 

Cost-Effective Audience Targeting

Since there’s no point in reinventing the wheel, we have to go where the audience is.

The first step would be to target the sweepstakes to audiences on Google and Facebook who have an affinity for beauty products, makeup, cosmetics or those who consider themselves fashionistas on Instagram and other sites. Given that Facebook and Google’s ad networks combined spread across the vast majority of the internet, this would be a cost-effective way to tailor the ad to attract a specific audience’s feedback. 

With the offer of a chance to win free movie tickets, participants would be asked to watch four short movie clips showcasing various scenes from the movie:

[Image of the sweepstakes]

They would then be asked a few questions about which clips appealed to them and then enter their name and email address for the ticket drawing.

Now, on the surface this seems like a simple sweepstakes, but it’s what’s happening behind the scenes that truly showcases the innovative path to what’s possible.

Leveraging Machine-Learning and AI Algorithms

Using Bayesian machine-learning models and AI algorithms in order to ascertain the biggest gains in terms of valuable data that can be gleaned from each user’s responses, watch time and much more. All of this happens behind the scenes, so that all the user is doing is interacting with the videos in much the same way as we’d watch a series of video clips on YouTube. 

Meanwhile, in the background, the information is being collected, studied and analyzed to determine not just the answer to the question, “Would fashionistas watch The Addams Family?” but also things like how likely they’d be to recommend it to a friend, how likely they’d be to see it in a theatre, how likely they’d buy the DVD or the movie on a streaming service and so on. 

The more users complete the sweepstakes, the more information can be drawn from the data. Still, with as few as 250 users, incredible associations and surprising findings can be discovered.

[An image showing the Facebook ranking factors - lift, etc.]

Of course, much of what’s going to drive their actions is their pre-existing knowledge about the brand, the characters and other facets of the film. However, by asking a question about an audience segment and then optimizing the creatives and other media to further reinforce the user’s style and tastes and how those things relate to their perception of a film.

But movies aren’t the only audience for Theatre Audience. They’re rolling out their adept, innovative solution to design and marketing firms, snack food brands, automotive manufacturers and much more. Wherever there’s a question that needs to be answered and a creative that needs to be optimized, Theatre Audience will be there with the intelligent processes and procedures that will extract that answer. 

See their powerful solution for yourself by scheduling a free, no obligation demo at www.TheatreAudience.com.