Prodigy Education: Powering an Audience-First Creator Campaign
How game-based learning leader Prodigy Education partnered with SuperAwesome to cut through the noise of a fragmented creator ecosystem to connect with Gen Alpha where they play.
📍 Location: US
Gaming & Entertainment
The Challenge
Prodigy Education’s campaign had to overcome three key challenges:
- Awareness and Performance: Standing out in a cluttered Back-to-School season and driving student registration and new users to the Prodigy platform.
- Talent Selection: Navigating the crowded creator ecosystem to identify impactful, kid-safe talent who could authentically represent the brand.
- Regulations: Preventing data collection, making it hard to measure the impact of youth-directed media.
The Solution
During the key Back-to-School period, Prodigy leveraged Awesome Intelligence for audience insights and technology to activate a comprehensive audience-first creator program that reached kids at scale, where they were most engaged. This ensured that every piece of media counted to drive major lifts in sentiment and student registration.
| Awesome Creators | Gamified Interstitial | YouTube Heavy-Up | Cross-Platform Video | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Approach | Partnered with influencers to build awareness, positive brand sentiment, and student registration | Previewed Prodigy gameplay and characters with a custom mobile interstitial | Reached kids where they are spending their entertainment time | AB tested brand and creator video across devices for maximum awareness and student registration |
| Formats | • Dedicated Videos and Integrations • YouTube Shorts • Livestreams • Ads and Cutdowns • Surveys • IG Stories | Older and younger versions to align with cognitive development stages | • Creator Ads/Cutdowns • YouTube skippable • YouTube non-skippable 15s | • Mobile • Desktop • Tablet • OTT |
| SuperAwesome Creators |
| Approach: Partnered with Influencers to build awareness, positive brand sentiment, and student registration Formats: • Creator Dedicated Videos and Branded Integrations • YouTube Shorts • Creator Livestreams • Creator Ads/Cutdowns • Surveys • IG Stories |
| Gamified Interstitial |
| Approach: Previewed Prodigy gameplay and characters with a custom mobile interstitial Formats: Older and younger versions to align with cognitive development stages |
| YouTube Heavy-Up |
| Approach: Reached kids where they are spending their entertainment time Formats: • Creator Ads/Cutdowns • YouTube skippable • YouTube non-skippable 15s |
| Cross-Platform Video |
| Approach: AB tested brand and creator video across devices for maximum awareness and student registration Formats: • Mobile • Desktop • Tablet • OTT |
Audience-Based Approach: Throughout the flight, Prodigy utilized a strategic audience-based approach, powered by Awesome Intelligence, to ensure campaign effectiveness. Safe data sourced across platforms was used to select the right audience and apply it to meet kids wherever they spend their time. Not only did Prodigy reach them on their favored media platforms, but we also connected with the right kids who over-indexed against Prodigy’s core interests in gaming and education and key values of respect, fun, friendship, curiosity, and kindness.
Prodigy, an online role-play game, appeals to users who enjoy challenges and gaming with friends. SuperAwesome identified this core platform dynamic and concentrated on the Gamer audience. This cohort is highly engaged with digital video, with 83% of them using YouTube daily.
Prodigy combines education and entertainment through game-based learning. The Classics audience is digitally engaged and loves to learn. 74% play games on their mobile/tablet.
Creatives show strong overlap between video consumption (81% use YouTube daily) and mobile gaming (74% play games on their mobile/tablet), highlighting opportunities where content and play intersect, a perfect fit for Prodigy.
Results
Prodigy saw a lift in gameplay, with Daily Active Users increasing 27.8% over the course of Phase 1 of the campaign.
Media Highlights:
- +73M impressions delivered
- VTR as high as 49% (+9pts over benchmark)
- +2.1M clicks
- 3.4% blended CTR (+3pts improvement vs phase 1)
Audience Highlights:
- All of Prodigy’s audiences outperformed the benchmark. Caring Classics and Curious Gamers are key for awareness, with players in these audiences having 68.6% and 61.5% view-rates (+24.6pp & +17.5pp vs benchmark respectively)
- Playful Creatives achieved the highest click-through rate across mobile apps, with 6.79% vs total audiences at 3.15% (+3.64pp). Girls over-indexed even further vs “Boys” and “Mixed” content
Brand Lift Highlights: Brand lift results include a +4pp directional move in kids saying Prodigy (95%) makes them feel smarter (93%).
| Awareness | Engagement | Student Registration |
|---|---|---|
| +14pp in awareness, the biggest uplift among the competitive set Why this matters: The campaign helped Prodigy successfully cut through end-of-year noise, validating the effectiveness of the channel strategy in reaching the right audience at scale | +6pp in word of mouth with kids ‘very likely’ to talk about Prodigy Why this matters: The content resonated beyond ad exposure, prompting kids to talk about Prodigy with their friends, organically amplifying paid efforts | +8pp lift in kids asking for a membership +7pp in paid version of subscribers Why this matters: The lift in awareness, engagement, and positive sentiment directly translated into downstream demand |
| Awareness |
| +14pp in awareness, the biggest uplift among the competitive set Why this matters: Phase 1 successfully cut through back-to-school noise, validating the effectiveness of the channel strategy in reaching the right audience at scale |
| Engagement |
| +6pp in word of mouth with kids ‘very likely’ to talk about Prodigy Why this matters: The content resonated beyond ad exposure, prompting kids to talk about Prodigy with their friends, organically amplifying paid efforts |
| Student Registration |
| +8pp lift in kids asking for a membership. +7pp in paid version of subscribers* Why this matters: The lift in awareness, engagement, and positive sentiment directly translated into downstream demand |
Why It Worked
Prodigy’s success wasn’t just about reach; it was about reach within a relevant, receptive audience. By moving beyond traditional age and gender segmentation, Prodigy embraced an audience-first and measurement-driven approach that directly addressed kids’ interests, behaviors, motivations, and went beyond reach to deliver outcomes.
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