Indy 500 races to a 5.9x return on ad spend

The Brief

The Indianapolis 500 (Indy 500) is the world’s largest single-day sporting event. The event organisers approached Genius Sports to help it to:

The Challenge

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway wanted to drive ticket sales for its prestigious annual event, the Indy 500.

With a huge capacity and an ability to host close to 400,000 fans, the Indy 500 needed to make raceday a sellout.

Doing so required Indy 500 to attract new audiences from surrounding States, encouraging them to buy tickets by generating excitement ahead of the flagship race.

The Solution

Genius Sports designed a programmatic media strategy to target racing enthusiasts in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio in the build-up to race day.

Using Genius’ sport-specific programmatic media buying service, which includes an algorithmic spend pacing curve tied to the sports calendar, budget was weighted towards ad placements on relevant sports and publisher sites at key times. Dynamic ad creative included elements like countdown clocks to drive urgency and click-throughs.

The ads were fully optimized for device usage and site placement.

The Result

The campaign, which ran for one month, delivered eye-catching results.