”We were delighted that our TrueView ads were really engaging to our audience”

Brent Kocher
Head of Marketing
America’s Cup

What they wanted to do

For over 160 years, sailors from around the world have competed for the prestigious America's Cup -- the oldest active trophy in international sport.

In 2011, the America's Cup organization set out to promote the historic 34th event in 2013 in San Francisco. They wanted to bring the thrills of sailing to a new generation and build excitement around the America's Cup finals in 2013. Their first port of call? YouTube.

How they did it

The Americas Cup team want to film every race and host each part of the challenge on its own America's Cup YouTube Channel.

“We have new technology which allows us to stream the events live and also provide an totally interactive experience for viewers.” said Brent Kocher, Head of Marketing for the America’s Cup. “Our goal is to drive fans to watch these videos on our YouTube channel and on www.americascup.com.”

On the Display Network, the team used Contextual and Topic to target the core areas of sailing and extreme sports, and also used Interest Categories to reach both sailing and general sports fans.

"For YouTube, we mainly used TrueView video ad campaigns, to showcase the online video experience we offer. This has proven to be very successful: the videos really give viewers a taste of what they will find when they get to the site."

Did it work?

A four-day display ad and YouTube blast campaign targeting in Italy, France, the UK, Spain and Sweden brought over 300,000 new visitors to the America’s Cup YouTube Channel and website.

Says Brent, “We were delighted that our TrueView ads were really engaging to our audience. In fact, our view-through-rate on was as high as 28%.”