Freeform’s yearly 31 Nights of Halloween stunt creates a seasonal moment for our audience to connect with our linear Fall lineup and engage with our spooky season-focused content. It is one of our most engaging times of the year, and audiences look forward to film offerings during this season. This year, Freeform jumped at the opportunity to utilize a new Meta product and created a first-in-class Instagram Reminder Ad that encouraged audiences to take note of and look forward to our 31 NOH calendar, and ultimately watch our film offerings on launch day.
We knew that we wanted to engage our audiences around our most important Halloween and Spooky Season franchises, so we created an Instagram reminder ad asset that included all of our audience's favorite movies plus a key call-to-action. Keeping our most popular licensed films front and center, like “Hocus Pocus,” “Addams Family,” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas”, we tapped into the popularity of many of our most beloved Spooky Season offerings. Additionally, we explicitly asked viewers to “Tap the Calendar,” to be reminded about our 31 Nights of Halloween stunt, to not miss any of the Spooky Season fun! Including a text-specified call-to-action in the promo, instead of simply implying that our audience watches the available films was key to the execution and success of this campaign.
Freeform’s IG Reminder ad on 31 Nights of Halloween drove over 52k opt-ins & a 0.73% reminder rate – surpassing industry benchmarks. The campaign also drove 183% higher opt-in rates compared to industry benchmarks. Meta shared that this is one of the most successful Entertainment IG Reminder campaigns since this product launched in June 2023. They attributed the success to several factors including strong creative, brand affinity, and balanced targeting.
