Background

Labelled “America’s coolest company” by Tech Republic, Big Ass Fans is a manufacturer of fans and evaporative coolers for industrial, agricultural, commercial, and residential use. Employing around 700 people and with offices in the US, Australia, Singapore and Canada, they are the world’s largest manufacturer of HVLS fans.

Insight

Big Ass Fans offer complex comfort solutions for a variety of temperature-based scenarios. They sell large industrial fans, large residential fans, evaporative coolers and heating devices, demand for all of which is greatly driven by ambient temperature and perceived comfort levels.

Challenge

Catering to the US-wide market, Big Ass Fans knew that the temperature is a key determinant of which product the customer will want. Given that they sell both heating and cooling products, the challenge was to align the right product offering with the right audience. The goal was to leverage real-time thermal triggers across their paid digital media investments to display more relevant ads based on the viewer’s localized weather conditions – thus increasing ad impact and ROAS.
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Objective

The campaign objectives were to increase eCommerce purchases and leads generated across Google Search Network, Google Display Network, Google Shopping, Facebook and Instagram, as well as to reduce overall advertising waste, through the utilization of weather targeted advertising.
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Strategy & execution

Big Ass Fans chose WeatherAds as their weather activation platform on the strength of the “customer service, ability to trigger and the integration into a variety of platforms”

Linking their Google and Meta accounts with WeatherAds, Big Ass Fans set up Multi-Location Automations (MLAs) enabling them to apply granular temperature-based targeting for the entire US Market.

They then created automated rules for their campaigns to activate weather-relevant ads when conditions met a specific threshold – for example, to turn on evaporative cooler ads in geos where the temperature was forecast to be above 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

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Results

Using WeatherAds, Big Ass Fans were able to achieve increased CTR, above average conversion rates, and realize a reduction in wasted ad dollars.

“Having the ability to turn off or turn on ads based on weather has enabled us to target the most appropriate areas and not waste ad dollars.” - Tracie Miller, Director of Digital Strategy & Execution.”

- Tracie Miller, Director of Digital Strategy & Execution

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