Case Study
R
Electronic Arts Achieves an 11% Increase in
Daily Conversions by Implementing Demographic Targeting
Electronic Arts (EA) is the world’s leading interactive
entertainment software company. Founded in 1982, the
company develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for videogame systems, personal
computers and the Internet. Electronic Arts markets its
products under four brand names: EA SPORTS™, EA™, EA
SPORTS BIG™ and POGO™. In fiscal 2006, EA posted revenue of $2.95 billion and had 27 titles that sold more than
one million copies.
EA’s broad portfolio of franchises includes global sports
blockbusters from its EA SPORTS™ brand; diverse offering from its EA™ brand features wholly-owned intellectual
properties and key Hollywood licenses for games; EA
SPORTS BIG™ franchises include games associated with
major sports leagues, NBA, NFL and FIFA.
“Search marketing has been a great
vehicle for our clients to communicate
with their core audiences at a strong
ROI. Along with Electronic Arts, we view
adCenter’s demographic targeting technology as an important breakthrough
that will greatly advance the ability of
marketers to reach their core audiences
more efficiently.”
-- Robert Murray
President
iProspect
Campaign Objectives
iProspect, the search engine marketing agency of record
for EA, viewed this test as an opportunity to demonstrate
how demographic targeting can impact performance—
how it can drive more conversions by targeting its highest
converting audience.
Microsoft adCenter provided EA with the technology to
learn about its target audience and the capability of reaching it through audience segmentation age and gender
tools.
For the demographic targeting test, EA and iProspect
identified the following objectives:
Increase CTR
• Average CTR on MSN is comparable to CTR on the other major search engines
• iProspect wanted the test to improve the rate
Increase conversions
• Historically, MSN has driven conversions at a rate
below the max CPA threshold
• iProspect wanted the test to improve both the raw
number of conversations and the conversion rate
while staying under the max CPA
Targeting Strategy and Methodology
iProspect, in consultation with EA and Microsoft’s Search
Media Operations team, designed the following methodology for a test conducted from October 18 – November 1st:
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Created a new test account to replicate all current
activities
Applied demographic targeting to active orders in the test account through incremental bidding on targeted demographic age groups
Paused current account during test period
Used data collected from September 2006 as the base
line comparison
Adopted tactics to remove seasonality from the analysis
iProspect determined that the best approach for this initial
test was to bid boost on the gender and age breaks by a
conservative 10% in order to closely manage the budget.
Campaign Results
The test drove significantly more conversions while modestly
increasing an already low CPA.
The targeting test exceeded the objectives:
a) Increase CTR
• 7% increase in CTR
• 12% increase in daily average clicks
• CTR for the targeted demographic increased 20%
b)Lower CPA and increase conversions
• 11% higher daily conversions and increased conversions on generic terms
• CPA increased by 5% but remained over 50% less than the max CPA
“adCenter drove considerably more clicks
and conversions from EA’s target demographic while maintaining a low CPA. Demographic targeting is a great promise and
adCenter has delivered on it.”
-- Brian Kaminski,
Managing Director
iProspect
Evolution of Strategy
The initial findings on demographics from this test have
proven to EA that they should build on these results to determine the long-term value of the conversions.
They also hope to learn how aggressively to pursue bid
boosting to reach its target audience.
For more information, please visit Microsoft adCenter: http://advertising.microsoft.com/Microsoft-adCenter