Work
753K+ Impressions
6,671 Landing Page Views
(79% from paid media)
3,790+ Email Opt-Ins
1.59% CTR
83.25% Resource Download Conversion Rate
$1.80 Cost Per Download
U.S. Soccer Foundation partnered with Kinder Joy of Moving in their World’s Game Campaign, a multi-channel paid media initiative launched in May 2026, running through the duration of the World Cup. The campaign was designed to drive awareness and high-quality email acquisition with targeted digital ads encouraging parents and caregivers to download a Resource Guide. While immediate resource guide downloads were the core objective, we also focused on U.S. Soccer Foundation’s broader strategic goal of growing its parent and caregiver audience. To maximize engagement, we prioritized parents and caregivers as the primary audience, educators and teachers as a secondary audience, and a 1% lookalike of existing USF donors and subscribers as a third, further refining targeting with interests in soccer and Kinder chocolates to align with both organizations’ initiatives.
The U.S. Soccer Foundation works to expand access to soccer and use the sport to support youth development in underserved communities. That mission depends on a growing base of engaged parents, caregivers, and advocates — but U.S. Soccer Foundation didn’t have a reliable way to convert a moment of national attention into long-term supporters.
The 2026 World Cup gave U.S. Soccer Foundation exactly that moment, and Kinder’s sponsorship gave the campaign a reason to move fast. But a short-term download goal wasn’t the same as USF’s real objective: building a durable pipeline of subscribers who would stay engaged long after the tournament ended.
The stakes were further heightened when, shortly after launch, U.S. Soccer Foundation lost access to its own Meta Ad Account due to ownership confusion with a previous vendor. This small misunderstanding could have put both delivery of this campaign and ownership of USF’s wider advertising assets at risk, right in the middle of the tournament’s highest-attention window. However, Teal was able to work closely with the USF team to find both interim and longterm resolutions to the access issues, and bring the campaign to life with minimal delay.
The overarching strategy for the World Game campaign was to leverage paid media to drive qualified traffic to a dedicated microsite using our Archie framework, where visitors were encouraged to download the World’s Game Resource Guide. Resource downloads served as the campaign’s primary conversion goal, while also creating an entry point for ongoing engagement through email acquisition.
Rather than launching on instinct, Teal built the media plan on historical performance data from a comparable campaign with similar objectives. These benchmarks guided the platform budget allocation and established realistic performance forecasts. Based on this analysis, Teal projected a total of 285 downloads which included 104 downloads from Google Ads and 181 downloads from Meta. These projections provided a clear framework for measuring campaign success while allowing for ongoing optimization as performance data became available. Overall, Teal exceeded the projected goal by driving 5,209 download conversions (>17X projections!) and decreasing CPA by 95% lower than projections.
That data-driven baseline was paired with an audience insight: parents and caregivers are the actual decision-makers when it comes to enrolling kids in sports, so they became the campaign’s primary audience, with educators and a lookalike audience of existing donors layered in as secondary and tertiary targets. Every audience was further refined around genuine interest signals — soccer and, notably, Kinder chocolate — so spend went toward people who were plausibly paying attention to both halves of the sponsorship.
When it came to building the campaign, Teal focused around three core audiences instead of one broad target: parents and caregivers as primary decision-makers, educators and coaches as the professionals who connect kids to programs, and a 1% lookalike of U.S. Soccer Foundation’s existing donor and subscriber base to widen the pipeline without diluting quality. Layering in soccer and Kinder-specific interest signals kept the targeting tight even as the campaign scaled.
The creative concept positioned the World Game Resource Guide as a free, accessible way for families to turn watching soccer into learning and play together. The primary image ads featured kids smiling and interacting; and a Meta carousel expanded that story with guide pages, benefit-focused text cards, and icons, while Google Search ads carried the same visual language to keep the experience consistent across every touchpoint a family encountered.
On Google Ads, Teal targeted high-intent queries around youth soccer activities and family learning resources, layering in keywords tied directly to World Cup interest so the campaign showed up exactly when families were already searching for soccer content. As data accumulated, low-volume and non-converting keywords were cut in favor of the terms actually driving downloads.
The FIFA World Cup presented a once-in-a-generation opportunity to connect with new audiences, and Teal helped us maximize every moment of it. They combined strategic thinking, thoughtful execution, and proactive communication to create a resource hub that not only exceeded our expectations but will continue delivering value long after the tournament ends. They were true partners throughout the process, and we're excited to continue working together.
Within the first three days of launching on Meta, the campaign generated 394 conversions at a $0.87 cost per lead, more than doubling the projected goal of 181 conversions. That early performance justified funding a scale-up: as budgets increased, the campaign crossed 1,000 leads and kept expanding reach without losing cost efficiency, with the parents and caregivers audience emerging as the strongest-performing segment throughout.
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