Delivering a win for Australian sports fans.

Kayo Sports attracts subscribers to its streaming service using Adobe Advertising Cloud.

Established

2018

Employees: 220
Sydney, Australia
www.kayosports.com.au

364K

Subscribers in less than one year

Products:

Objectives

Launch and grow a revolutionary new sports streaming service from the ground up

Drive subscriptions and re-engagement with a data-driven advertising strategy

Optimise campaign performance to meaningful business metrics with clearer attribution and better targeting

Results

Grew paying subscriber base from zero to 364,000 in less than one year

Attracts engaged subscribers who watch 5.9 hours weekly and 4 to 5 sports monthly on average

14% of people who visited after viewing a CTV ad subscribed to a free trial

Won Best User Experience at the SportsPro OTT Awards in Madrid

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“With Adobe Experience Cloud, we can be more strategic and sophisticated in the way we approach customer acquisition and engagement.”

Tom Mennetrier

Senior Customer Acquisition Manager, Kayo Sports

Groundbreaking new streaming service for Aussie sports fans

Kayo Sports launched in November 2018, giving Australian sports fans access to a whole new world of streaming and on-demand content. Through a convenient month-to-month subscription, customers can watch more than 50 sports on their laptops, smart phones, tablets, and connected TVs.

The first year was a big success for Kayo Sports, with a subscriber base that grew to 364,000 paying customers in only 10 months. Kayo users watch an average of 5.9 hours a week and 4 to 5 different sports each month. Providing over 30,000 hours of premium sport and delivering a world leading streaming experience in quality and performance has already won Kayo Best User Experience at the SportsPro OTT Awards in Madrid.

But the company is under no illusions—it must work hard to attract and retain subscribers. The streaming platform needs to deliver targeted, personalised content to keep people interested year-round, even when their favorite sports are in the off-season.

As its streaming service went live, Kayo Sports knew marketing and advertising would be crucial to winning in the competitive entertainment industry. It needed market-leading technology to support a comprehensive, data-driven marketing strategy. After weighing the options, the company decided to partner with Adobe.

“With Adobe Experience Cloud, we can be more strategic and sophisticated in the way we approach customer acquisition and engagement,” says Tom Mennetrier, Senior Customer Acquisition Manager at Kayo Sports. “Adobe offers the best technology to deliver on the overall vision for the Kayo brand.”

Tom Mennetrier

Senior Customer Acquisition Manager, Kayo Sports

Ads build on Rugby World Cup excitement

Sports fans are everywhere, and Kayo Sports makes a point of reaching out to them across every channel, in multiple formats.

“Video is a big area of focus for us, but it can be difficult to measure and optimise video ads across the different walled gardens, such as connected TVs, YouTube, and Facebook,” says Mennetrier. “Adobe Advertising Cloud DSP changes the game by providing cross-channel visibility and letting us run more targeted advertising.”

One clear moment of success with Adobe Advertising Cloud came during the 2019 Rugby World Cup. With hundreds of thousands of rugby fans watching, the event provided an ideal testing ground for CTV ads—a priority for Kayo.

“Mastering CTV is the biggest challenge for advertisers in Australia today,” says Mennetrier. “We typically use the channel for branding activities, but we wanted to find out how effective it could be for driving customer acquisition.”

Armed with a charming video featuring a pet axolotl with the power to predict match winners, Kayo set out to win new subscribers from among the substantial rugby fan base. The experiment paid off. CTV exceeded expectations by performing better than other display ads—and proved to the acquisition team that it’s possible to measure and optimise direct response to CTV brand campaigns.

“During the Rugby World Cup, Adobe Advertising Cloud showed that CTV outperformed all other display campaigns in post-view conversions,” explains Mennetrier. “It contributed to the highest post-impression traffic volumes and moved 14% of visitors to sign up for a free Kayo trial.”

“The team is doing an incredible job using Adobe Audience Manager to segment their prospect and customer bases into relevant sports affinity groups. We push those segments into Adobe Advertising Cloud for personalised targeted and retargeting campaigns.”

Matt Barden

Customer Acquisition Manager, Kayo Sports

Kayo Sports gains a clear view of the playing field

Kayo’s data-driven approach to programmatic advertising with Adobe Advertising Cloud is underpinned by Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager. The solutions provide a consolidated view of all channels’ performance, by stitching ad platforms’ data with our CRM data, enabling campaigns’ optimisation towards more meaningful business KPIs. By breaking those silos, our trading team can factor new versus returning members in their bid optimisation across every channel and as a result, achieve further return on ad spend.

“After implementing the Analytics for Advertising Cloud integration in Adobe Analytics, we started to get much deeper visibility into our prospects’ subscription activity on site, allowing us to better understand the relevance of our advertising campaigns,” says Matt Barden, Customer Acquisition Manager at Kayo Sports.

Adobe Analytics also helps Kayo track audience exposure and create suppression lists, lowering costs by minimising duplicate reach and overexposure. And the Adobe Analytics Analysis Workspace feature plays a key role in campaign planning and optimisation, providing a fast and easy way to analyse ad placements and track performance.

Meanwhile, Kayo uses Adobe Audience Manager to segment audiences from internal customer data, including that of its parent company; News Connect. With the ability to use first-party data, the company can run personalised retargeting campaigns and conduct lookalike modeling, powered by Adobe Sensei, to expand its reach.

“The team is doing an incredible job using Adobe Audience Manager to segment their prospect and customer bases into relevant sports affinity groups,” says Barden. “We push those segments into Adobe Advertising Cloud for personalised targeted and retargeting campaigns.”

The team advances to the next round

In the year since its inception, Kayo has adopted additional Adobe Experience Cloud solutions, including Adobe Experience Manager and Adobe Campaign. The streaming service worked with Accordant Linked by Isobar to implement the solutions and establish practices for targeted, data-driven advertising. Today, the acquisition and engagement teams have migrated all advertising activity in-house as the company continues to grow.

“Adobe Advertising Cloud has been our primary media trading platform, since launch,” says Tom Mennetrier. “We launched search, display, video campaigns first, and as we enhanced our stack, we rolled out app, CTV, and more recently audio campaigns. We are now exploring emerging channels, such as digital out-of-home with the Advertising Cloud Team. Trading all media under one platform allows us to optimise our targeting and create a smooth, personalised journey as people sign up for our 14-day trial, become subscribers, and ultimately renew their subscriptions.”

Looking ahead, Kayo plans to use Adobe Experience Cloud to set up next best offer capabilities, using what it knows about customers to meet their future needs—which will support customer retention. In addition, the technology platform sets the stage for the upcoming launch of a new entertainment brand that will expand the Kayo platform. The data-driven approach to programmatic advertising will give both brands a strong boost as they work to win over viewers in Australia.