Applying Performance Thinking to Brand: A Behind-The-Scenes Look at Bonfire’s ‘We Found You’ Campaign

Running performance campaigns for clients is what we do best. But promoting our own brand meant rethinking how we apply that expertise to brand building and awareness at scale.

Our “We Found You” campaign was a strategic opportunity to apply our programmatic advertising expertise to our own brand—not just to demonstrate capability, but to reach our audience with the same precision and intent we bring to client campaigns.

Building and running it meant revisiting our KPIs, rethinking how we report on success, and shifting our focus to longer-term impact. The challenge was striking the right balance between bold creative and targeted execution — all while keeping space for testing and iteration.

We’re still mid-campaign, but the early insights are already shaping how we think about brand-led programmatic. This post offers a behind-the-scenes look at how we built the campaign and the key takeaways so far. It’s not the final word — but it’s a view from the middle of the work, with lessons we’re already applying elsewhere.

Let’s dive in.

Programmatic Advertising: An Opportunity Worth Seizing

As we planned the campaign, we set out with three clear objectives:

• Raise awareness of our programmatic advertising services among the right audiences.
• Extend our bottom-of-the-funnel (BOFU) strength with a top-of-funnel (TOFU) initiative to support a more full-funnel marketing model.
• Lay the groundwork for new leads — with the understanding that immediate conversions would be unlikely.

Programmatic was the right fit to help achieve these goals. It gave us the reach of traditional mass media, but with the audience precision, targeting control, and data transparency we expect from a performance channel. That meant we could approach brand building with the same strategic discipline we apply to direct-response campaigns — a core part of how we’re evolving our full-funnel approach.

Creativity Still Matters

Even the smartest targeting can’t compensate for creative that doesn’t land — especially when your audience is marketers. It’s a group that knows the game, spots cliché quickly and expects more from ad content.

With “We Found You”, we aimed to subvert expectations. It’s a self-aware campaign that acknowledges the very tech powering its delivery — a deliberate nod to the fact that we were using programmatic to promote programmatic. The concept had to be confident, sharp, and just cheeky enough to stand out — while still aligning with the precision and intent that defines our work.

The Concept

The “We Found You” concept breaks the fourth wall — calling out the very fact that the ad has successfully found its viewer. That self-referential tone was intentional. It allowed us to highlight the targeting capabilities of programmatic in a way that felt confident, playful, and true to our brand.

We also tailored the message for two core audience groups:

• For Senior Marketing Professionals, we leaned into the tech — using language like “programmatic media” and “data-driven advertising” to reflect their familiarity with the channel.
• For Business Leaders (CEOs, Owners, Directors), we shifted the focus to outcomes — speaking to the value of reaching the right customers, without diving too far into the mechanics.

Building Effective Creative

We needed the creative to be agile — strategically flexible, quick to adapt, and purpose-built for refinement as the campaign progressed. But just as importantly, it had to be effective. This wasn’t a trade-off between speed and impact; it was about designing a concept that could flex across formats and still cut through.

Animation gave us exactly that. It removed the complexity of live-action production while giving us full control over the look, feel, and tone of the concept.

The visual direction had to reflect our tech-forward brand and feel relevant to the moment. We landed on the idea of a sentiment machine — a futuristic, all-knowing presence that playfully acknowledges the viewer. It was a creative device that nodded to the rise of AI while reinforcing the targeting precision at the heart of programmatic.

To bring it to life, we worked with:

• Animation: Josh De Boer
• Sound: Soundbyte Studios
• Voice: Stuart Halusz

This approach gave us the flexibility to quickly fine-tune and iterate, with minimal production overhead — ideal for a campaign that would be optimised in-flight, and built to perform from the outset.

Making it Dynamic

To bring the concept to life across channels, we developed more than 50 unique assets spanning video, audio, and display. Each execution was tailored not just to the platform, but to the day of the week and the audience group — adding a layer of contextual relevance designed to keep the creative feeling fresh and intentional.

Midway through the campaign, we launched a set of remarketing display ads designed to build on the narrative and deepen familiarity. These targeted two additional audience groups and introduced a streamlined message: “We found you, we can find your audience.”

This second wave wasn’t just repetition — it allowed us to extend the story, reinforce the brand, and make each touchpoint work harder across the funnel. Every creative version was designed to scale while staying consistent, relevant, and adaptable across formats.

Embracing a Full-Funnel Mindset

Our campaigns have always been grounded in performance — generating leads, optimising ROI, and tracking results with precision. That remains a core strength.

But with “We Found You,” we set a different kind of challenge: build brand awareness without compromising the strategic discipline that drives our work. It meant working at the top of the funnel while keeping our bottom-funnel mindset — measuring outcomes differently but with the same clarity of intent.

Redefining Success Metrics

With brand awareness as the objective, we had to reframe how we defined success. Immediate lead generation — while still monitored — wasn’t the primary focus. Instead, we shifted our attention to metrics that better reflect top-of-funnel performance and campaign influence.

• We tracked reach and frequency through our DSP to understand how consistently we were getting in front of the right people. Combined with channel-level delivery insights, this helped us manage exposure and ensure the creative had time to make an impact.
• We also monitored search volume for “Bonfire Digital”, since each ad ends with a clear call to search the brand. Using Google Search Console, we compared baseline trends to in-campaign activity to assess uplift in brand interest.
• To understand how audiences were engaging once they arrived, we used UTM tracking to measure traffic driven by programmatic placements — and compared this to other inbound sources. From there, we looked at on-site behaviour: time on page, scroll depth, and interaction rates, all helping to gauge whether the creative was building curiosity.

And yes — we kept an eye on leads. None yet attributable to the campaign at time of writing, which we expected given the stage of the funnel. Still, it’s always there in the background — not as a failure point, but as a long-term indicator.

Adapting Our Reporting Mindset

One of the most deliberate shifts we made was in our reporting methodology — moving from short-term optimisation to a more strategic, brand-focused lens. In our usual performance work, we’re used to reviewing campaign data almost daily — making quick optimisations based on tangible signals like cost per lead or conversion rate. But top-of-funnel campaigns operate on a different cadence.

With “We Found You,” we had to be more measured. Brand-building requires time — not just to be seen, but to be remembered. It’s about creating familiarity through repeated exposure, not chasing short-term clicks. Research suggests it can take up to seven brand exposures before action is taken, so we’ve been deliberate about letting the campaign run long enough to build that recognition.

That’s not to say we’re hands-off. We’re still tracking engagement trends, reviewing creative performance, and watching for opportunities to refine. But the mindset has shifted: rather than reacting to early data, we’re focused on maintaining consistency, managing frequency, and identifying when to optimise — not just what to optimise.

It’s been a useful recalibration. It’s reminded us that full-funnel campaigns demand a different rhythm — one that still values data but applies it through the lens of pacing, patience, and long-term impact.

Early Insights and What’s Not Working

We’re about a month into the “We Found You” campaign, with roughly two-thirds still to run — and already, a number of early insights are helping shape where we focus next.

Some results have tracked as expected. Others have prompted a closer look — giving us the chance to refine the experience and strengthen the connection between creative, media, and performance. It’s the kind of real-time learning that makes programmatic campaigns so powerful when they’re managed strategically.

Audio Clicks: An Unexpected Interaction

One of the more interesting early signals has been the volume of clicks from our audio placements — the small banners that appear alongside ads in radio and podcast apps. They’ve been generating more interaction than expected, which led us to take a closer look at what’s driving that behaviour.

Initial GA4 data shows average engagement time from these clicks is around six seconds, suggesting some level of accidental or low-intent interaction. While not unusual for this format, it’s prompted us to review the landing page setup and explore ways to improve clarity or user flow for this segment.

A surprising early result of the campaign: clicks on audio ad assets grew consistently for the first four weeks of the campaign.

Video Impressions and Page Engagement

Our video ads have delivered more than 71,000 impressions, with relatively low direct clicks — which aligns with what we’d expect from a campaign focused on visibility over action.

The more telling metric has been the steady growth in visits to our Programmatic service page — rising to 389 sessions this month, up from 200 the month prior. That increase tells us the message is landing — and prompting the right kind of follow-up.

Rather than chasing clicks, we’re focused on how awareness is turning into qualified interest further down the funnel.

A bar chart showing impressions plotted against spend for the 30 days between February 19th and March 19th 2025. As you can see, impressions closely tracked spend each day the ad assets ran.

Traffic Trends and Cross-Channel Impact

Overall, site traffic is up 1.93% month-on-month, with notable contributions from Programmatic Audio, adding around 300 sessions, and Paid Video, which contributed another 65 sessions.

That said, some of our other channels — including direct, organic social, display, referral, and email — have seen a dip in activity over the same period. It reflects the balancing act of scaling awareness while maintaining performance at the lower end of the funnel.

We’ve also seen a week-on-week increase in ad clicks, pointing to a positive trend in familiarity and message recognition. That kind of momentum is key to TOFU success — and it reinforces the value of building a campaign with both scale and staying power.

What’s Not Moving Yet

One of our key brand measures — search volume for “Bonfire Digital” — hasn’t shifted meaningfully yet. We’re reviewing whether the call to action could be made more prominent across certain placements to encourage stronger follow-through.

We’ve also seen zero eBook downloads from the Programmatic page so far. Heatmaps show that only about 10% of users are scrolling far enough to see the offer, so we’re planning to move the eBook higher on the page and refine the supporting copy.

What’s Next

With early insights in hand, we’re focusing on a few key areas to keep the campaign progressing:

• Remarketing Campaign Optimisation: Now that our remarketing activity is live, we’re monitoring performance and refining creative where needed to improve message reinforcement and frequency pacing.
• Programmatic Page Updates: We’re moving the eBook offer higher on the page and updating the above-the-fold messaging to improve visibility and alignment with campaign intent.
• Organic Content Support: We’re rolling out supporting content across social, email, and the blog to extend campaign visibility and maintain consistency across channels.

There’s still plenty of road ahead — but the indicators we’re seeing are promising, and the structure is in place to keep momentum building.

The “We Found You” campaign has been a chance to put our programmatic strategy to work on our own brand — with the same discipline, structure, and creative intent we apply to client campaigns.

Shifting focus from bottom-of-funnel performance to brand-led programmatic has challenged us to reassess how we define success — and confirmed the value of taking a full-funnel view.

There’s more to come, but the early indicators are strong — and we’re confident programmatic will continue to play a key role in how we grow awareness, build credibility, and stay connected to the right audience.

If you’re exploring what programmatic could look like for your brand, we’d love to help make it work.