Dive Brief:

• Athletic apparel retailer Finish Line teamed with Facebook Marketing Partner StitcherAds for a campaign that used Facebook's new broad audience targeting for dynamic ads. The effort resulted in a 49x sales increase and a 9.5x return-on-ad-spend (ROAS), according to a StitcherAds press release made available to Marketing Dive.
• Broad audience targeting lets marketers utilize Facebook's network of user data to find audiences that haven't yet engaged with the brand but are deemed likely to buy. The benefit for advertisers is intended to be a reduced cost per ad purchase thanks to the targeting. In Finish Line's case, its 9.5x ROAS was more in line with retargeting campaigns meant for people who have already engaged with the brand instead of totally new consumers.
• The value in broad audience targeting is the sheer amount of relevant, detailed information about consumers that marketers can use for a competitive advantage and for maximizing ad spending, Conor Ryan, co-founder and head of U.S. at StitcherAds, said in the release. Ryan described Facebook as having more relevant and detailed consumer information "than any company on the planet."

Dive Insight:

StitcherAds' campaign for Finish Line made interesting use of the broad audience targeting with dynamic ads feature on Facebook, helping the retailer automate its prospecting by uncovering likely-to-buy consumers who had yet to engage. Along with the impressive sales and ROAS results, Finish Line also saw 3x greater reach with the campaign and an 83% decrease in cost-of-sale, according to the release.

Retail brands with strong brick-and-mortar presences like Finish Line are eyeing heavier digital promotions to bolster their e-commerce businesses and online presence as the physical retail sector continues to face significant headwinds amid shifting consumer shopping habits and disruption from digital-first upstarts.

Facebook, despite facing slowing ad growth on core offerings like News Feed, remains a strong avenue for these types of campaigns, as it holds a deep store of data on its two billion and counting users including their connections, online interactions and behavior across a large swath of websites.