Paid media with purpose: The Children, Cities and Climate Action Lab

The Children, Cities and Climate Action Lab (CCC) is a global initiative from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSTHM) working to reimagine public health and academia’s role in addressing the climate crisis. They approached us to help gather crucial data about climate change impacts on specific demographic groups.

Our objective was to design and execute a targeted digital campaign across Facebook and Instagram to recruit survey participants from two key demographic groups: young people aged 18-29 years and parents of children under 18 years. 

The campaign aimed to gather valuable insights into how extreme climate events, including air pollution, floods, heavy rains, and heat waves, impact these groups’ health, wellbeing, and daily activities. 

This research would contribute to a broader understanding of climate change’s direct effects on different population segments.

We implemented a comprehensive four-phase strategic approach.

The initial phase involved a thorough campaign audit, encompassing a review of the existing campaign structure, analysis of ad setup and Typeform integration, development of performance estimates, and in-depth audience research.

Following this, we moved into campaign setup, where we created 20 targeted campaigns implemented across 10 locations, with two campaigns per location, incorporating custom audience targeting, creative development, and conversion optimisation setup. 

The third phase focused on campaign optimisation, featuring continuous performance monitoring, real-time ad optimisation, targeting refinement, and monthly performance reviews. 

Finally, our measurement and reporting phase included bi-weekly performance reports, actionable improvement recommendations, and a comprehensive wrap-up analysis.

We achieved exceptional efficiency in our campaign performance, with an impressively low average cost per click (CPC) of £0.04. This enabled us to maximise traffic within our budget constraints, whilst £0.04  served as a valuable benchmark for future campaigns. 

The campaign revealed interesting behavioural patterns across our target demographics: Parents demonstrated lower initial engagement with the ads but showed significantly higher conversion rates, suggesting deeper engagement once they reached the survey. 

Conversely, young people showed stronger initial engagement on Facebook, achieving a CTR of 0.93% – notably 0.13% higher than parents – indicating more effective ad resonance with this demographic at the awareness stage.