Sports Brand Scores Big by Beating ROAS Benchmark by 3.5X with NFL Campaign
Overview
Driving Revenue for a Specialty Sports Brand
Specialty sports stores offer a wide selection of apparel, gifts, home décor, and merchandise for local NCAA, NFL, NBA, MLB, and MLS teams. Each store is tailored to local teams and culture, with the same curated assortment available online, ensuring fans can shop anytime, from anywhere. Seeking to build on this loyal fan base and strong online presence, a specialty sports brand partnered with Simpli.fi to capitalize on NFL season demand with a targeted digital campaign.
The sports company’s primary audience included individuals interested in the NFL, fantasy football, and sports betting, who prioritize product availability, quality, and local relationships. Ultimately, the campaign’s goal was to achieve a 4X Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), drive incremental online sales, and reach NFL enthusiasts and fantasy sports betting audiences at scale without sacrificing efficiency.
A Winning Creative Strategy
A key element that set this campaign apart from competitors was the use of Simpli.fi’s high-impact creative offering. Thanks to the advertiser’s established relationship with a high-impact creative partner, the Simpli.fi team was able to strategically integrate with the platform to enhance campaign performance while maintaining engaging, premium ad experiences. This setup enabled the team to deploy rich media ad units showcasing NFL merchandise in an eye-catching way, driving higher engagement and stronger performance.
Reaching New Fans with Third-Party Sports Audiences
To reach new potential customers, the sports brand used third- party audience segments that identified individuals who showed strong interest in NFL content, fantasy football, and sports betting across the web. By tapping into these curated sports-focused segments, Simpli.fi helped connect with passionate fans who might not have visited the site organically yet but were highly likely to shop for team apparel and gameday gear.
These audiences were then served engaging display and rich media ads promoting the retailer’s NFL merchandise while browsing sports, news, and entertainment sites. High-impact units played an important role in capturing attention within these environments, reinforcing brand recognition and showcasing the breadth of the NFL product assortment.
Driving Awareness Based on Online Behavior
The sports brand also leveraged Keyword Search Retargeting to capture fans already signaling intent through online searches, building broader awareness of its NFL gear and keeping the brand top of mind during peak football moments. The sports retailer placed a heavy emphasis on the quality of each impression, using real search behavior as the core signal. By targeting users who recently searched for relevant terms, Simpli.fi extended the brand’s reach beyond site visitors to a wider audience of in-market fans. This approach allowed the brand to efficiently build upper-funnel awareness among the exact audiences most likely to explore the site, shop their favorite team, and ultimately convert.
Re-Engaging High-Intent Shoppers
Additionally, the sports retailer used Site Retargeting to re-engage individuals who had already visited the website and expressed interest in its products. By focusing on these high-intent shoppers, Simpli.fi ensured media dollars were spent on fans most likely to return and complete a purchase.
Using site activity signals such as product views, cart interactions, and browsing behavior, Simpli.fi built dynamic retargeting audiences and served tailored ads to users as they continued browsing across the web. This kept the sports retailer top of mind throughout the shopping journey and encouraged lapsed visitors to return and make a purchase.
The use of high-impact creatives further elevated these retargeting messages, helping the brand stand out and encourage users back to the site.
To maximize performance, the sports brand and Simpli.fi refined Site Retargeting audiences over time, prioritizing visitors who had engaged with key categories or demonstrated strong purchase intent. Notable optimizations included shifting more budget to Site Retargeting to improve ROAS, adjusting domain bid factors, and blocklisting poor-performing domains to eliminate wasted spend. Frequency caps were also tuned to balance visibility with efficiency.
Simpli.fi Outperforms ROAS Benchmark
The 30-day campaign drove more than 4,000 online actions, resulting in a low Cost Per Action (CPA) of $12.60. By focusing on fans whose online behavior and content consumption signaled football fandom, along with the help of consistent campaign optimizations, the sports brand efficiently expanded its reach, strengthened brand awareness, and drove more users to its site. This strategy ultimately helped achieve a 7.5X ROAS and $460K in revenue. Building on this success, the sports retailer plans to continue partnering with Simpli.fi to capitalize on key sports moments and future NFL seasons using flexible, full-funnel programmatic strategies.