Case Study  

StartEngine & Island Brands

StartEngine Drives Over $34,000 in Investments for Island Brands with Taboola

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StartEngine & Island Brands

  • $34,000+ In Investments in One and a Half Months
  • 171% Overall Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
  • 711% ROAS with Taboola Retargeting
  • 113% Roas with Taboola Motion Ads
  • 14% Roas with Taboola Data Marketplace

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Company

StartEngine was founded with the goal of helping entrepreneurs achieve their dreams by removing funding barriers. Island Brands USA is a premium beer brand with a mission to bring better, cleaner beer to the world.

Challenge

Find funding for Island Brands to further support local brewers and launch a new product line.

Solution

Work with StartEngine to reach potential investors. StartEngine worked with Taboola to find high-quality audiences for Island Brands outside of search and ocial platforms.

Results

With Taboola, Island Brands was able to find over $34,000 in investments with a 171% ROAS.

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Introduction

StartEngine was founded with the goal of helping entrepreneurs achieve their dreams by removing funding barriers. Founder Howard Marks was joined by Shark Tank judge and serial entrepreneur, Kevin O’Leary (aka Mr. Wonderful) as StartEngine’s Strategic Advisor and Investor in 2020. Since its inception, they have helped over 500 companies raise more than $400M+ from retail investors. They used Taboola to help attract investors to their Island Brands listing.

Island Brands USA is a premium beer brand with a mission to bring better, cleaner beer to the world. Based in Charleston, South Carolina; Island Brands products are currently available in seven Southeastern states, with expanding domestic and international distribution and fleetwide service across Carnival Cruise lines.

StartEngine Turns to Taboola to Reach Investors Outside of Search and Social Platforms

StartEngine Turns to Taboola to Reach Investors Outside of Search and Social Platforms

Island Brands wanted to raise funds to further support their local brewers,
and to expand their product line. They turned to StartEngine to support
their fundraising efforts by finding new investors online.

StartEngine is always looking for new and innovative ways to reach investors
on behalf of the companies they work with. They turned to Taboola to help
Islands Brands find new investors outside of search and social platforms.

Overall, StartEngine was able to achieve an overall 171% ROAS for Island
Brands with Taboola, allowing them to meet their investment goals. All
campaigns ran for a month and a half, and in that short amount of time,
were able to drive over $34,000 in investments for Island Brands.

Taboola’s Motion Ads Drive 113% Return on Ad Spend for StartEngine and Island Brands

Working with Taboola, StartEngine launched a sponsored content campaign, which ran on Taboola’s network of premium websites on the open web; including news sites, blogs, online magazines and other digital properties.

The campaign included Taboola’s image and motion ad creative formats. Motion ads are up to 15-second moving creatives that are designed to capture people’s attention while reading or viewing online content. Motion ads impacted ROAS for Island Brands by 113%.

StartEngine Launches Taboola Retargeting Campaign

Through the installation of the Taboola Pixel, StartEngine was able to further improve Island Brands’ ROAS by retargeting those site visitors that hadn’t yet made an investment.

The Taboola Pixel is a tracking code that is installed on an advertisers website and is triggered when an identified action is taken on an advertiser’s site. By retargeting site visitors that were engaged with the Islands Brands’ StartEngine listing, the retargeting campaign achieved a ROAS of 711%.

StartEngine Achieves an 14% Return on Ad Spend for Island Brands with Campaigns Using Taboola’s Data Marketplace Audience Segments

Ads were targeted at beer and alcohol enthusiasts, and those actively looking for investments using audience segments from Taboola’s Data Marketplace. The addition of Data Marketplace segments impacted ROAS by 14%.

Taboola’s data marketplace includes two types of audience segments — more than 20,000 third-party segments offered through partnerships with industry leading data providers, and Taboola segments created from aggregated data related to the 1.4 billion monthly users that engage with the Taboola network.

StartEngine looks forward to working with Taboola in the future to find high-quality investments for companies of all types.

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Working with Taboola was easy and effective. Their helpful account management team allowed us to get up and running with effective creatives that ultimately exceeded our expectations in terms of ROAS.

- Carrie Zhang, Director of Funding Growth