Wpromote has been around long enough to know that labels can be limiting. The agency, founded in 2004, specializes in performance marketing, but that doesn’t mean its business is all about driving numbers. At the heart of what Wpromote sets out to do is tell a good story. 

The agency formulated what it calls the “Challenger Framework” to put this mission into action. Driven by Polaris, its intelligence platform, Wpromote now spends just 20% of its time shaping data-driven hypotheses for clients, with the remaining 80% focused on finding new opportunities and determining how to improve strategies once media goes live.

Wpromote’s impressive year began with a wave of new leadership brought in from outside the traditional agency ecosystem. Megan McDonagh, a former marketing leader at Intel, joined Wpromote in May as its first CMO. Later in the year, the agency hired Marisa Yukich as chief people officer to enhance the company’s culture and drive talent acquisition. And in November, Andrea Bendzick entered the fold as Wpromote’s new CEO, bringing a raft of experience from the tech world that fits well with Wpromote’s self-concept as more Silicon Valley than Madison Avenue.

Yukich was previously chief people officer at talent management company Talogy, while Bendzick was previously CEO and president of IT company Astreya.

The agency has the technology to back up this attitude. Polaris is integrated with AI capabilities from Google and Meta that allow Wpromote to quickly synthesize new solutions. For example, Creative Audit is Wpromote’s new platform for AI-powered ad testing. The tool sifts through thousands of videos and generates insights to improve performance optimization and brand suitability on media platforms including YouTube, TikTok and Meta.

Polaris’ biggest test, and arguably Wpromote’s most impactful work of 2024, took the marketing world by storm. Working for Peacock during the 2023-2024 NFL season, the agency took advantage of a surge in young female viewers thanks to Taylor Swift’s newfound love for the game and Kansas City Chiefs player Travis Kelce. Wpromote went on the offensive, targeting this affinity in Peacock’s marketing on Meta-owned platforms with relevant hashtags and Kelce-themed assets. The quick work paid off: Swift’s audiences accounted for 45% of all Peacock subscriptions made through Meta, the agency said.

Polaris was central to the strategy, helping Wpromote identify where and how to shift media. The platform “surfaced the opportunity to allow us to continue to chase performance,” said Mike Stone, Wpromote’s chief relationship officer.

Wpromote doubled down on the effort for the Chiefs’ Wild Card game against the Jets later that season, which saw 27 million viewers across Peacock and NBC. The agency’s media strategy on Meta and TikTok helped to reach millions of unique users, driving, respectively, 44% and 32% of Peacock subscriptions that signed up through those platforms during the campaign, according to Wpromote.

The agency also drove results for home audio brand Klipsch around its limited-edition sound bar created in partnership with Marvel’s “X-Men ’97” franchise. Through an approach that leveraged real-time optimization across social media platforms, paid search, email and SMS, Wpromote was able to target the campaign’s desired audience—people aged 18 to 34—and generate 9.7 million impressions. Klipsch also grew its social following from users aged 18-to-44 by 20% in the process, the agency said in its entry.

Wpromote’s quantitative results helped earn it a bevy of new accounts in 2024, including Aritzia, Madison Square Garden, Coursera and Revo. But as with its mission to incorporate storytelling alongside optimization, the agency does not overlook the qualitative objective behind every performance-driven campaign. 

“You don’t need to reach more people, you need to mean more to more people,” Stone said.