Photo Credit: The Country Daily
Nashville, TN - The HyperEDGE database marketing solution was put to the test in a multi-channel digital advertising campaign promoting Jimmie Allen for the Country Music Association’s ‘New Artist of the Year’ award.
Traditionally, when artists are nominated for a CMA Award, their record labels take out ads in trade publications to build awareness and encourage votes from music industry executives. These trade ads come with a hefty price tag and are limited in scope, but do provide the means to reaching a subset of the right music industry executives.
In need of a more direct way to reach CMA voting members, Stoney Creek Records – under the BMG label group – partnered with HyperValue to take a different approach in 2021.
Using the HyperEDGE database of record label staff, artist managers, publishers, radio program directors, and other industry executives with CMA voting eligibility, HyperValue executed a 15-day digital campaign targeting these executives with digital advertisements across Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. These ads appeared in a variety of formats (shown below) during the 15 days of CMA’s final voting round, serving 10,914 total impressions and generating 87 clicks from CMA voting members. Ad clicks were directed to the CMA voting page.
Despite initial concerns about whether industry executives would be receptive to ads appearing on their personal Facebook and Instagram feeds, results showed not only receptiveness, but engagement. These social ads saw an overwhelming number of post interactions in the form of likes, comments, and shares.
As a testament to the quality of the target audiences, HyperValue was able to report the names, job titles, and companies of the individuals who interacted with the ad. Among this list were record label executives, artist managers, and some of the top radio program directors in the country.
Drawing from the assortment of performance metrics from these ad platforms, HyperValue was also able to report reach rate, frequency, and estimated ad recall lift from the campaigns, in addition to the locations and demographics of the audiences who were served ads. These metrics provide a level of detail beyond what trade publications typically can offer.
Stoney Creek Records was pleased by the results of the campaign, and pleasantly surprised with what the campaign achieved, at a fraction of the cost of trade ads. Because of the ability to target these precise audience segments, HyperEDGE campaigns can accumulate a high volume of impressions, reach, frequency, and clicks, even on a low budget.
The results of this campaign were further validated on Wednesday, November 10, when Jimmie Allen was awarded the CMA’s “New Artist of the Year” title for 2021.