Anheuser-Busch Taps Facebook Ads to Drive Sales

Since creating its Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/BudLight) in 2009, Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light brand has used the platform (where it has more than five million fans) to showcase its content, which is renowned for being witty and sparking viral conversations.

Between December 3rd and 31st of 2012, Bud Light ran a Facebook-only ad campaign that identified its most engaging page posts and then used Facebook Page posts to increase their reach and frequency.

Bud Light’s Page post ads appeared in all Facebook placements as well as in its mobile news feed. Targeting was to fans and non-fans ages 21 to 34, while frequency averaged more than five times over the 28-day period.

“Bud Light is a very social brand that naturally lends itself to a broad and highly-engaged Facebook fan base. This targeted campaign allowed us not only to identify and amplify our top content, but to tie fan exposure to our Page post ads to a notable uptick in offline Bud Light sales.”

The ads were created from past Page posts that had driven high engagement, one of which showed someone pouring a Bud Light from a smartphone.

To determine the impact of the campaign on in-store sales, Bud Light conducted a ROI study with Datalogix (www.datalogix.com), which measured the actual offline sales lift resulting from digital media across a universe of more than 100 million consumers on a one-on-one level, providing unprecedented scale.

The study showed a 3.3 percent sales lift among households exposed to the ads versus the control group, and a 6x return on advertising spend. In addition, 22.8 million U.S. households were reached by the campaign, representing 20 percent of total U.S. households.

“We’re a data-driven company, and results like these help us make smart digital marketing decisions that tie to the bottom line," says Herscovici.