Race for Life’s 5K running events were identified as the key opportunity to reach these goals for several reasons:
- 5K has the biggest proportion of sign-ups
- The 5K subproposition is one of the most appealing for new starters
However, during the first weeks of the January sale that launched the 2025 events series, the 5k events were behind targets with other subpropositions seeing stronger performance
This posed a challenge, as most supporters searching for Race for Life used brand terms or phrases like “run for cancer,” without specifying the type of event. In fact, only 21% of clicks during this period came from keywords containing “5K.” We needed to find ways to turn these broader searches into sign-ups for specific event types.
While floodlight tags were in use, the existing on-site user journey and data set-up made Value-Based Bidding (VBB) complicated.
As a solution to this challenge, we opted to find a way to use Value-Based Bidding (VBB) within CRUK’s account structure. Despite being complicated to implement, this would allow us to prioritise ad spend on users most likely to sign up for the 5K event, rather than treating all sign-ups equally.
We developed a workaround that used the floodlight data available to create a hierarchy with VBB that upweighted the high-priority 5K sign-ups and specifically downweighted the events with lower targets, such as Pretty Muddy Kids events.
We worked with the CRUK data team for this workaround and on how to implement a long-term and more robust solution. The next step will be to support their marketing team in preparing a business case, with this test being used as a proof of concept.
