Transforming Media Forecasting with Data-Driven Precision

With Polaris IQ, Anytime Fitness moved from reactive guesswork to proactive, data-driven growth. Our proprietary tech equips Anytime Fitness with the tools to evolve their media strategy, align teams, and drive business results.

ABOUT THE BRAND

Helping Customers Forge Their Own Path to Fitness

Anytime Fitness began with a simple promise—access to a gym, anytime—but has grown into a global brand with 5,500+ locations and 24/7 digital and in-person support. Today, we empower people to build lasting physical, mental, and emotional strength by making fitness approachable, nutrition doable, and wellness holistic, for anybody, anytime, anywhere.

The Challenge

Turning “What If?” Into Confident, Data-Backed Decisions

As Anytime Fitness evolved their media strategy, they needed more sophisticated ways to forecast impact, evaluate performance, and unify planning processes.

Director Tyler Igou regularly fielded urgent executive questions like “What happens if I add $1 million?” or “If I add $150,000 this month, what will it get me?” but he lacked reliable tools to provide confident answers. The team relied on fragmented spreadsheets from various ad platforms to project their annual media budget.
The brand also needed to ensure creative investments aligned with platform-specific best practices, particularly for paid social channels like TikTok and Meta, to drive performance.

Taking a reactive approach to forecasting and creative optimization created operational friction and limited strategic agility in the increasingly competitive fitness market.

THE APPROACH

Unifying Measurement, Media, & Creative in One Platform

Wpromote deployed our Polaris IQ marketing intelligence platform, activating key apps tailored to Anytime Fitness’s evolving needs:

  • Growth Planner: Delivered highly accurate forecasting based on modeled incremental media impact by channel. This enabled real-time scenario planning with budget adjustments and media allocation optimization across proven performers like social, programmatic, and search.
  • Creative Audit: Evaluated paid video ads against AI-backed platform best practices and surfaced statistically significant creative elements like strong hooks and text-based CTAs. The system leveraged Gemini AI to analyze video creative against platform-specific best practices for YouTube, TikTok, and Meta, along with brand guidelines.
  • Benchmark Explorer: Provided real-time performance context by comparing campaign results to industry and cross-vertical cohorts, enabling data-driven competitive positioning against other fitness brands across key metrics like CPCs and CPMs.

This integrated approach transformed Anytime Fitness’ media planning from reactive crisis management to proactive strategic optimization.

THE RESULTS

Precision Planning: Achieving Forecasting Excellence and Creative Performance Gains

Anytime Fitness successfully transitioned to data-driven media planning with measurable improvements across forecasting accuracy and creative performance:

  • Accurate Forecasting: Growth Planner delivered 95% accuracy in media performance projections, creating a reliable foundation for strategic decision-making.
  • Creative Performance Optimization:
    • Meta Platform: Videos with strong hooks in the first 2 seconds showed +6.04% video completion rate and +1.98% CTR improvement.
    • TikTok Platform: Text CTAs demonstrated 37.42% increase in engagement vs. verbal CTAs.
    • Cross-Platform Insight: Strong hooks proved the most critical performance driver across Meta and TikTok.
  • Strategic Media Allocation: Identified opportunities to increase investment across awareness and mid-funnel campaigns on social, programmatic, and search to help drive more efficient CPAs for our bottom-of-funnel campaigns
  • Operational Transformation: Eliminated reactive “what if” responses in favor of forward-thinking scenario modeling, streamlined budget allocation decisions, and enhanced collaboration between media strategy and creative teams
  • “Growth Planner has been a very valuable tool for us and has proven to have a high level of accuracy.”
    Tyler Igou, Director at Purpose Brands

Proof Is In The Numbers

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