From Audience to Outcome: Sponsorship Measurement That Pays Off
Reach and impression numbers tell you the size of the audience. Pulsecast (Motionworks' opt-in survey product, fielded with Cint and Lucid) and Placecast (Motionworks' visitation product) tell you what that audience did next: what they noticed, how their opinion shifted, and whether their behavior actually moved. Two examples below - a CPG sports sponsorship and a Jackson-Hewitt radio campaign - show how it works.
Use Case
Operator sponsorship measurement
Outputs
Brand awareness + purchase intent + opinion shift
Methodology
Pulsecast surveys + Placecast visitation
Audience Match
Opt-in respondents matched to event exposure
2x
Brand Awareness
Brand 4 attendees 27% → 66%
~5x
Purchase Intent
Brand 4 booth visitors vs. control
Partnership Stack for This Engagement
Synthetic Population + Pulsecast
+
/
Opt-In Survey Panel + Marketplace
2x
Brand awareness more than doubled for Brand 4 among the audience that attended the event - 27% control, 66% attended (per the Pulsecast study)
~5x
Purchase intent nearly 5x higher for booth visitors of Brand 4 vs. the lookalike control - 12% control, 58% booth visitors
Core Finding
The event heightened brands' awareness, especially for Brand 4 and Brand 5 - with awareness for Brand 4 more than doubling. It drove higher purchase interest across all brands. The sponsorship was particularly impactful across multicultural respondents.
Secondary Finding
For attendees who visited the brands' booths at the event, the majority felt the booths improved their opinion of the brands. Booth visitation doubled purchase intent for Brand 5, and purchase intent for Brand 4 was nearly 5 times higher for booth visitors than for the control group.
Cint / Lucid panel surveys the audience / Motionworks Synthetic Population matches the exposure / Anonymized respondent IDs flow back as funnel lift
How Pulsecast Works
Targeted, Anonymized Surveys with an Opt-In Respondent Panel
Pulsecast - utilizing insights from Motionworks' Population Intelligence products - identifies respondents who have opted in to share their thoughts, experiences, and opinions via surveys. Motionworks handles survey design, programming, hosting, fielding, and analysis end to end.
Motionworks Can Derive Respondents Who:
Live within certain areas of a city or state
Meet target demographic profiles based on age, gender, income, languages spoken, employment, and more
Commute by car to work
Take public transportation
Travel on toll roads
Visit public facilities, libraries, state parks, etc.
Attend events
And more
Opt-In Respondent Identification Process
01
Motionworks identifies mobile devices that engaged in the target activity from within its 250M+ device pool
02
Motionworks matches the devices against the opt-in respondent database at panel partners Cint and Lucid
03
Motionworks passes matched anonymized respondent IDs to Cint and Lucid, which deliver the surveys
Millions of respondents across the U.S. have opted in to share their thoughts, opinions, and experiences.
01
Example 01 - CPG Sports Sponsorship
How a Single Sponsorship Reshaped Funnel Metrics Across a 10-Brand Portfolio
Example 01 - CPG Sports Sponsorship
How a Single Sponsorship Reshaped Funnel Metrics Across a 10-Brand Portfolio
A CPG company trusted Motionworks to measure the impact of a sports sponsorship on funnel metrics across a portfolio of ten different featured brands - from dish soap to toothpaste. Motionworks identified devices in attendance that had opted in to receive surveys and launched a series of questionnaires to the exposed group as well as a look-a-like sample in the same geography. Motionworks identified lifts across the purchase funnel and found that the sponsorship was particularly impactful across multicultural respondents.
Brand Awareness - Control vs. Exposed vs. Attended
Share of respondents aware of each brand. The exposed group is the geo-matched audience reachable by event marketing; the attended group physically attended or watched the festival. Brand 4 awareness more than doubled vs. control.
Control
Exposed
Attended / Viewed
2x
CPG Pulsecast: Brand 4 awareness more than doubled from 27% (control) to 66% (attended).
The two breakthrough brands were the ones with lower baseline awareness. Brand 4 jumped from 27% control to 66% attended; Brand 5 rose from 59% to 79%. The high-awareness brands (1, 2, 3) were already near ceiling, so the percentage-point lift looks small even though their downstream purchase-intent lift was meaningful.
Purchase Intent - Control vs. Exposed vs. Attended vs. Booth Visitors
Share of respondents indicating purchase intent for each brand. Booth visitation drove the largest absolute uplift, especially on Brand 4 (12% to 58%, nearly 5x).
Control
Exposed
Attended
Booth Visitor
~5x
CPG Pulsecast: booth visitors showed nearly 5x the purchase intent of the control group on Brand 4 (12% to 58%).
The on-site experience compounds the sponsorship's funnel impact. For Brand 5, booth visitation roughly doubled purchase intent (31% to 61%). The booth is where the largest absolute lift occurred - exactly the readout a sponsorship sales team needs to defend activation budgets.
Booth Effect on Brand Perception
Among attendees who visited each brand's booth, share who said the booth improved their concert experience and improved their opinion of the brand.
Improved Concert Experience
Improved Brand Opinion
Key Highlights
Key Highlights: The event heightened brands' awareness especially for Brand 4 and Brand 5 - with awareness for Brand 4 more than doubling. It drove higher purchase interest across all brands. For those who visited the brands' booths at the event, the majority felt that the booths improved their opinion of the brands. Additionally, booth visitation doubled purchase intent for Brand 5, and purchase intent for Brand 4 was nearly 5 times higher for booth visitors than it was for the control group.
02
Example 02 - Jackson Hewitt
AM/FM Radio Powers Tax Preparation Brand Effectiveness
Example 02 - Jackson Hewitt
AM/FM Radio Powers Tax Preparation Brand Effectiveness
Motionworks ran the Jackson-Hewitt engagement on two products in parallel. Pulsecast surveyed 782 respondents on their familiarity with the brand. Placecast measured store visitation across DMAs grouped by AM/FM radio media weight. The combined readout shows the same audience moving through the funnel: awareness on the survey side, visits on the visitation side.
Pulsecast - Survey Familiarity
% Very or Extremely Familiar with Jackson-Hewitt, by Radio Listening Level
Combining the top two familiarity tiers shows the salience effect cleanly: heavy listeners are roughly 2x as familiar with Jackson-Hewitt as non-listeners.
RAD
Jackson-Hewitt Pulsecast: heavy radio listeners are 2x as familiar with the brand as non-listeners (39% vs. 19% Very or Extremely Familiar).
Jackson-Hewitt asked Pulsecast to quantify whether radio listening correlates with brand salience. Among the 137 heavy listeners surveyed, Very Familiar reached 24% (vs. 8% for non-listeners) and Never Heard of It dropped to 1% (vs. 10% for non-listeners). The radio plan is doing measurable work on the top of the funnel.
Brand Familiarity by AM/FM Radio Listening - Jackson-Hewitt
Pulsecast surveyed 782 respondents. Columns are radio listening segments; rows are familiarity tiers. The Heavy listening segment shows the strongest brand salience.
AM/FM Radio Listening →
Total
None
Light (≤7 hrs/wk)
Heavy (8+ hrs/wk)
Sample Size →
n = 782
n = 288
n = 357
n = 137
Extremely Familiar
12%
11%
12%
15%
Very Familiar
13%
8%
12%
24%
Somewhat Familiar
27%
26%
28%
26%
Heard of it but Not Familiar
42%
45%
43%
33%
Never Heard of It
6%
10%
5%
1%
Placecast - Visit Lift by Media Weight
Placecast: Visit Lift by Media Weight
Unique visits to Jackson-Hewitt locations per 10,000 adults, by month. DMAs were grouped into three media-weight buckets based on the campaign plan. Heavy media-weight DMAs delivered a 245% lift over light DMAs in January - peak filing season.
Light DMAs
Medium DMAs
Heavy DMAs
+245%
Jackson-Hewitt Placecast: heavy media-weight DMAs delivered a +245% January visit lift over light DMAs.
Placecast measured 753 visits per 10,000 adults in heavy media-weight DMAs in January, vs. 218 in light DMAs - a 3.45x indexed lift at peak filing. Medium DMAs landed at 2.95x. The response curve has no flat region through the tested range, and the same pattern repeated against 2023 controls.
Light Media Weight
Result1.00x baseline
Detail218 visits / 10K (Jan)
Medium Media Weight
Result2.95x lift
Detail643 visits / 10K (Jan)
Heavy Media Weight
Result3.45x lift
Detail753 visits / 10K (Jan)
Indexed to Light DMAs (Light = 1.00x)
Same data, normalized so Light = 1.00x in every month. Heavy DMAs ran 3.45x in January - the cleanest signal of the season.
Medium
Heavy
2024 vs. 2023 - January Heavy Lift Repeated
Year-over-year comparison on the same media-weight cohorts. 2024 was the stronger season; the lift methodology held.
2023
2024
Why This Matters
Reach, impressions, and attendance numbers tell sponsors how big the audience was. They don't tell sponsors what that audience actually thought, bought, or did next. Pulsecast asks the audience directly through the Cint and Lucid opt-in panel. Placecast measures where that same audience went next. Together they produce a defensible, privacy-preserving, audience-level readout on whether your event - and the brands inside it - actually shifted what attendees noticed, considered, and bought.
The Punchline
The CPG sports-sponsorship study showed Brand 4 awareness more than doubling and booth visitors reporting nearly 5x the control's purchase intent. The Jackson-Hewitt study showed heavy radio listeners are roughly 2x as familiar with the brand as non-listeners, and heavy media-weight DMAs delivered a 245% January visit lift over light DMAs. All three readouts came from the same Motionworks workflow we would point at your event: anonymized device match through the synthetic population, the Cint and Lucid opt-in panel for surveys, and Placecast for visitation.
These Are Operational, Not One-Off
Pulsecast and Placecast run continuously. The Cint and Lucid panel reaches millions of opt-in respondents nationwide; Placecast measures visitation across all U.S. DMAs. Motionworks designs, programs, hosts, fields, and analyzes each engagement end to end, with the same statistical rigor applied across music, sports, retail, QSR, auto, financial services, and CPG.