Meet Sightly’s Ryan Vaspra in this expert Q&A
Ryan Vaspra, Sightly’s SVP of media strategy and analytics.
With the Super Bowl LIII fast approaching, we chatted with Ryan about how advertisers can get the most bang for their buck during one of the most-watched television events of the year.
Q: Planning and executing the right Super Bowl ad campaign can be overwhelming. Where do you usually start with clients?
A: Yes, there is certainly a lot of noise and competition for consumer attention around the Super Bowl. The challenge really comes down to helping clients hit the most relevant subset of their audience in the most cost-effective way. This starts with establishing a clear desired outcome or objective, and then focus on optimizing for the metrics that will get you there.
Q: What are some of the best pieces of advice you can give to advertisers when it comes to Super Bowl campaigns?
A: I can’t emphasize the importance of optimization enough. This is true for all campaigns, but becomes especially important when you’re looking at a timeline of four hours for an event like the Super Bowl. Advertisers must be able to quickly hone in on the most responsive user segments, and further optimize the campaign toward the desired outcome. Figure out what’s working during the first half of the game, and adjust the line items of their campaign based on that data for the second half of the game. Don’t worry about CPM, focus rather on cost per reach or cost per lifted viewer.
Q: Can you share an example of a Super Bowl campaign you’ve worked on that you’re especially proud of?
A: I’ll share an example from the work we did with Frank’s Red Hot during last year’s Super Bowl. The objective of the campaign was to increase brand awareness and purchase intent among their consumer base. Using Sightly’s proprietary People Centered Targeting, we identified, targeted and reached five custom designed target personas, of which we found women aged 44-54 to be an extremely responsive user segment.
Q: What’s your role here at Sightly beyond helping clients optimize their Super Bowl spend?
A: Super Bowl campaigns are just a small microcosm of the work our media strategy and analytics team does here at Sightly. We are proud data nerds and constantly looking for ways in which we can help our clients’ campaigns be more successful. Experimenting with different ad formats and user segments, we can always get more targeted and more precise in our segmenting and reach. It’s this challenge that excites the team on a daily basis.
Q: What’s your all-time favorite Super Bowl ad campaign?
A: From just a pure branding experience, I would say the Budweiser frogs campaign that was the 1990’s equivalent of a meme that goes viral today. Everyone of all ages was speaking and acting like frogs for a few weeks. Back then, creating a workplace buzz was performance branding, today you’ve got to know which workplaces buzzed, what those people like and shop for and take them on your brands customer journey.
Want to learn more about exciting work Ryan is doing every day? Feel free to drop us a line!
