Case Study - Sail Outdoors

SAIL is one of Canada’s leading outdoor retailers, offering hunting, fishing, camping and outdoor gear in stores across Ontario, Quebec and online.

SAIL wanted to improve the efficiency of its premium media investments without compromising inventory quality, brand safety or audience relevance.

The opportunity was to determine whether inventory traditionally purchased through direct publisher agreements could be accessed more efficiently through programmatic buying (while maintaining the same premium environments and increasing the amount of relevant audience reached for every media dollar invested).

BK transitioned selected direct media investments to a PMP-first buying strategy, accessing the same premium publisher inventory through private marketplace deals in Display & Video 360.

Rather than pursuing lower-cost inventory at the expense of quality, the strategy focused on making SAIL’s existing media mix work harder. Programmatic buying introduced greater pricing efficiency and flexibility while preserving access to trusted, brand-safe publisher environments.

The result was a more efficient path to both scale and audience quality: lower media costs allowed SAIL to generate more exposure within the same investment, while programmatic audience and buying capabilities improved the campaign’s ability to reach its intended consumers.

The shift to a PMP-first approach delivered measurable efficiency gains across both media cost and audience reach.

SAIL reduced CPMs by 26% on comparable premium inventory, generating six figures in net media efficiencies even after BK fees.

Those savings translated directly into stronger audience delivery. SAIL increased on-target reach by 23%, while reducing cost per on-target reach by 55%.

In practical terms, the strategy allowed SAIL to reach significantly more of the right consumers for every dollar invested – demonstrating that programmatic buying can create value beyond lower CPMs by improving the overall productivity of premium media investment.