Toronto Star Case Study

Toronto Star and Hivestack: drive up key brand metrics with a creative approach to programmatic digital out of home

Americas

Toronto Star

Blue Noise

Leading Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper utilized custom audience targeting to increase familiarity and drive growth of digital subscriptions

The leading Canadian English-language daily news publisher leveraged DOOH screens and utilized audience-based targeting and messaging to increase familiarity, opinion and consideration of The Toronto Star.

Objective

The Toronto Star, one of Ontario's most recognizable brands, wanted to leverage programmatic DOOH to increase familiarity, opinion, and most importantly consideration of a digital subscription to the Toronto Star.

Solutions 

The campaign ran in late spring of 2022 using 4 demographic targets, which included adults ranging from 25-34 years and 35-49 years in two separate area codes in the GTA. In addition to custom audience segments, audience targeting pre-determined demographic segments were also added to include niche groups, such as established immigrants (living in Canada for over 5 years) and other select ethnic groups. 

In order to target these groups, the Hivestack DSP:

  1. Leveraged Environics data to identify FSAs for which immigrant populations indexed highly

  2. Applied the demographic target (environics) 

  3. The client also wished to align creative headlines/topic with contextually relevant environments, so each place-based media had its respective creative in the following locations:

    1. Restaurants

    2. Entertainment venues

    3. Sports venues

    4. Shopping 

    5. Gas station

    6. TTC

Brand Lift Study Results

By leveraging unique benefits of programmatic DOOH, the campaign proved to be a great success, driving a 1.7x lift in consideration of the brand. Results for the Toronto Star campaign also included: 

1.5x lift of the brand’s familiarity

1.3x lift in brand awareness

Testimonial

“Partnering with Hivestack allowed us to leverage unique targeting abilities and reach our specific target audiences with different and contextual messages and topics. Programmatic DOOH gave the opportunity to use an innovative creative approach to connecting with readers through contextual environments at the right place and the right time.” -  Tim Beach, Media Lead,  Blue Noise