Case study
Real-time Olympic medal ads for the IOC
Giorgio Lo Nardo created the product as Product Manager: the Custom Medal Engine—also referred to as the Custom Ad Engine—turned confirmed Olympic medal results into localized Facebook and Instagram video ads in the winner's country within three minutes.
- Role
- Product Manager
- Partners
- IOC, Facebook & development team
- Olympic Games
- Tokyo 2020 & Beijing 2022
Tokyo 2020 results
Built for scale
These figures are from Tokyo 2020 only. The workflow was also used at Beijing 2022, but no Beijing metrics are claimed here.
- 4
- Languages
- 29
- Disciplines
- 8
- Countries
- 300+
- Events
- 1,000
- Assets
- 8,000
- Potential variations
- +15%
- Traffic increase to Olympics.com
- +63%
- Platform engagement vs. benchmark
The challenge
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) needed social creative that could respond while a medal moment was still live. I worked with the IOC's technical team to integrate the workflow with its results system, enabling confirmed medal results to be received in real time.
My role
As Product Manager, I created the product, translated IOC requirements into delivery priorities, and coordinated the IOC, Facebook and a small development team. I managed timeline and budget, resolved Facebook approval constraints, and kept the workflow ready for time-critical publishing.
How the Custom Medal Engine worked
The workflow combined confirmed IOC results data with automated creative production and Meta publishing. For each medal, it used the athlete, event, discipline, medal, country and flag to create the relevant localized video creative, then targeted the paid ad to the winning country.
Independent awards coverage describes the Custom Medal Engine as a bespoke tool built from scratch, integrated with IOC data systems and the Facebook and Instagram APIs. It reports 29 disciplines, eight countries and just under 8,000 unique creative variations.
The result
After a result was confirmed on the IOC platform, the workflow created and localized the video asset for the winning athlete and country, then pushed it to Facebook and Instagram as an ad targeting the winner's country within three minutes.
Performance Marketing World’s awards coverage credited the work with helping Olympics.com unique users exceed target by more than 20%, alongside conversion-rate gains and millions of impressions.