Leading up to Samba TV’s partnership announcement with Twitter, the NHL was a beta partner that leveraged the social platform to execute a campaign focused on driving viewership of the Stanley Cup Finals. Samba’s Verified Tune-in Rate was the measurement component that allowed the NHL to assess how advertising on Twitter was impacting viewership of games.

Based on the capabilities of this partnership, the NHL discovered that Twitter was successful in increasing tune-in of Stanley Cup games and they were also able to extract key insights to power future campaigns and optimization. The league measured four games—one in each conference final, and two Stanley Cup Finals clashes—and it found an average verified tune-in rate of 40 percent, reaching as high as 66 percent.

Heidi Browning, CMO of the NHL, added context around how the league leveraged Samba’s partnership with Twitter: “It is a highly efficient way to connect with our fans. We only required one or two exposures to drive the highest lift in user rates. We will use our learnings [from the closed beta] for this year’s postseason and share insights with our TV broadcast partners—national networks and regional sports networks.”

We were also honored to have Heidi discuss the benefits of the Samba/Twitter partnership in a ThinkLA keynote talk this week: