Tastemade found consistent, profitable scale with ContentDiscovery

ContentDiscovery’s AI-based advertising engine efficiently targeted Tastemade’s ideal audiences at cost-effective price points, ensuring stable growth over their campaigns.

SUMMARY

Growth at profitability targets	Increased ad budgets
ContentDiscovery consistently delivered on Tastemade’s 150% ROAS target over several months and numerous campaigns.*	Tastemade confidently expanded its advertising investment in its original campaign for Tastemade Food by 3X and initiated campaigns for several of its other FAST channel properties.*

BACKGROUND

Location: Santa Monica, CA
Company Size: 51-200
Founded: 2012

Tastemade is a modern media company that engages a global audience of hundreds of millions of monthly viewers on all major streaming television and mobile platforms. They create award-winning video content and original programming in the categories of Food, Travel, and Home & Design that is shared with an engaged, passionate, and global community.

Tastemade is easy to watch anywhere you stream TV for free. Content is available on-demand in the Tastemade mobile and TV apps and ad-free with Tastemade+.

THE CHALLENGE

Monitoring ROAS for profitable, FAST growth

Tastemade found early success promoting its mobile and web-based properties using digital marketing channels. Growing their FAST channels using a similar performance marketing strategy, however, presented inherent challenges. For this medium, performance entails acquiring viewers who not only tune into their channels, but remain engaged, watching both content and ads until they meet their ad-revenue (ROAS) targets. Calculating ROAS in this scenario entails assimilating their channel’s monetization and user acquisition data to understand how their viewer acquisition costs compare to their viewer-generated ad revenue.

Tastemade recognized that it would be ideal to meet their audiences where they are – on their TV sets. However, the relatively high cost of CTV ads, ecosystem fragmentation, lack of attribution data, and challenges in computing ad-driven ROAS, made it difficult to scale profitable UA for their FAST channels.

THE SOLUTION

Automated campaign targeting based on predicted user value

Tastemade partnered with Wurl to optimize their channel’s monetization potential through AdPool and elevate channel discoverability using ContentDiscovery. By leveraging both Wurl solutions, Tastemade was able to run optimized campaigns and automate targeting for the viewers most likely to love their content and deliver a high ROAS. The campaigns ran across CTV and Mobile, acquiring viewers at the most profitable price points.

Wurl is a key growth partner for FAST, allowing us to precisely understand the impact of our campaigns in real-time.

Normally, marketing on FAST channels is a bit of a shot in the dark. With Wurl’s integrated approach, ContentDiscovery is able to deliver detailed ROAS insights right out of the box.

This significantly improved our customer acquisition costs and proved a revenue model for our FAST marketing.

Evan Bregman

General Manager, Streaming
Tastemade

THE RESULTS

Stable FAST channel growth at a 150% ROAS target

With ContentDiscovery, Tastemade was able to advertise across Wurl’s massive network of CTV supply, unlock cost-efficiencies with mobile retargeting, and reach their 150% ROAS goal month over month. This stable growth at performance targets encouraged Tastemade to increase its ad budget and launch campaigns for its other FAST channels, such as Tastemade Home.

Wurl has been an invaluable partner in navigating FAST channel growth. Not only do they report on our down-funnel ROAS targets, but they also actively optimize toward and successfully achieve other important goals. This includes targeting the right viewers with the most resonant messages, while also finding efficiencies across both mobile and CTV channels.

Evan Bregman

General Manager, Streaming
Tastemade

*Source: Wurl, May 2023 – December 2023