Success Story

Subway Reaches Engaged Users on YouTube with Pixability

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Industry:

Food and Beverage

Platform:

YouTube

139%

higher Attention Time than YouTube benchmarks

7.81s

AT for desktop, the top performing device

Subway is a well-known global QSR brand looking to maximize its ad dollars in Australia.
Targeting a broad consumer base, reach has always been a key metric for their campaigns, however, they’ve realized that not all impressions are created equal.

To combat this inequality and avoid media wastage, Subway and Zenith Australia set out to find a way to optimize their ad buys and reach users who are more likely to pay attention to their ads, thus increasing consideration.

The Strategy

For their Footlong Fame Campaign in Australia and New Zealand, Subway was looking to test if they saw a lift in attention-optimized reach via curated channel lists when compared to a run-of-network (RON) inventory YouTube strategy. According to eMarketer’s Q4 2023 report, YouTube is the number one platform for driving Attention Time (AT) metrics, beating out connected TV, podcasts, streaming audio, social, and other key mediums. With this in mind, Zenith turned to Pixability to curate a custom list of YouTube channels that would drive efficient reach within their target audience and positively impact their core attention metrics. To effectively optimize the campaign, Pixability calculated the CPM per second of attention by combining attention data and the IAB category taxonomy to determine which categories performed the best in each market.

The Result

Non-skippable ads drove an average Attention Time (AT) of 5.17 seconds - well above YouTube’s benchmark of 3.73 seconds. The average proportion watched (Attention time divided by creative duration) for non-skippable ads achieved an average of 34.45% of the ad being watched by consumers. The average proportion watched of a YouTube non-skippable ad is a truer measure of consumer engagement than the more traditional video completion rate (VCR) metric or other engagement metrics given how these legacy metrics naturally fluctuate over the campaign period. Music & Audio was the top-performing IAB category for the Australian and New Zealand campaigns. Generally, Australia’s campaign reported slightly higher Attention Time (AT) metrics with the most effective IAB categories differing between the two markets. Sports, Hobbies & Interests, Video Games, and Movies categories performed best when CPM and Attention Times (AT) scores were overlaid. The top-performing channels included Mr Beast, The Boys, Stay Wild, 7clouds, and Nick DiGiovanni.

higher Attention Time than YouTube benchmarks

AT for desktop, the top performing device

“
This campaign highlighted the importance of collaborating with partners like Pixability. By leveraging Pixability’s curated YouTube channel lists, we were able to not only achieve our reach objectives but also engage users who were more attentive to our ads. This approach significantly enhanced our media efficiency and effectiveness.
”

Peter Dunne, Digital Director

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