The Meta Challenge—organized by the Marketing Department at Universidad ORT Uruguay Entravision Cisneros Interactive, Meta’s representative in Uruguay—allowed students in the Digital Marketing course, part of the Bachelor’s Degree in Management and Administration, to apply the knowledge they had acquired in the course to a real-world campaign, yielding measurable and observable results.
The activity consisted of a team competition in which students had to create ads, using real money, to run on Meta’s social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram. The goal was to gather contact information from people who would eventually become volunteers or, primarily, donors for the Liceo Jubilar Juan Pablo II(Montevideo) and the Liceo Francisco(Paysandú).
"The students learned how to create a real campaign, run it, and optimize it."
They also learned that, in practice, theory is often not what it seems.
- Sebastián Álvarez.
During the campaign, they used Facebook Business Manager. Within the platform, they employed a technique called remarketing, which in this case involved retargeting ads at people who had visited the sign-up form but, for some reason, had not registered. They also conducted A/B tests, which involve creating two versions of an ad to determine which one users respond to better.
“It was a really great experience because we got to put everything we’d been studying in class to the test, ”said Juan Andrés Lizarralde, a member of one of the winning teams. “Having a goal, creating the ads, and working on them as a team was really great.”
Patricia Miller, Country Manager and Director of Entravision Cisneros Interactive, stated that:
“One of Meta’s main goals is to provide digital education, teaching people how to use its platform so they can get the most out of it.”
More than 60 students participated. The campaign reached 77,984 people and resulted in 52 registrations, 30% of whom were willing to donate. The winning teams were determined based on the total number of registrations and the number of registrations relative to the amount of money invested.
“This advertising allows us to reach a wider audience and, therefore, helps us achieve our goal of attracting donors,” said María Sofía Presno of Liceo Jubilar. “We continue to realize how important social media is. We hope to keep doing this for many years to come, because it was fantastic.”
“Since we’re a high school in the countryside, it’s hard to get to the capital, so the fact that they’re taking us into account is very gratifying, because it allows us to reach many more people. The results have been very good,” added Martín Scheiner of Francisco High School.
The winning team that raised funds for Liceo Jubilar consisted of Héctor Brasesco, Patricia Nizarala, Santiago Saavedra, Juan Andrés Lizarralde, and Tomás Outeiro.
The winning team from Liceo Francisco consisted of Malena López, Juan Martín Aguiar, Juan Alvarellos, Francisco Quiñones, Julieta De Gaspari, Valentina Ribeiro, Gianfranco Dirusso, Agustina Lasowski, Maite Ruiz, and Valeria Añon.