GroupM Nexus, EssenceMediacom: Cancer Research UK

When Cancer Research UK relaunched its biggest fundraising drive, Race for Life, two key questions drove the campaign: how to better target men, and how to be locally relevant – most participants don’t travel more than 10 miles for a race.

The answer was data. And the cross-channel platform from GroupM Nexus, Unmissable. By overlaying location-based data, audience insights, YouGov data and client first-party data, Unmissable powered hyper-local ads on a national scale, supported by fluid budget allocation in real time.

This guaranteed that ads were seen at the right frequency at each race location, no matter the channel or device. To minimise wastage, media across all channels was switched off just before each race took place. Spend was then redistributed to continue supporting active races. The client’s real-time sign-up data was used to identify which events needed further support, boosting sign-up performance.

Two-thirds of those exposed to an ad took action, with one in five making a donation. This granular, data-driven approach to media and messaging is set to transform how Cancer Research supports future fundraising events.

As a result of the campaign Cancer Research saw a 6x uplift in sign-up intent amongst males and a 75% uplift in audience engagement.