Paddy Power Scales Paid Social While Cutting CPA by 10% with Pixis AI

About

Paddy Power is a leading UK-Irish sports-betting and iGaming brand known for its sharp odds, bold marketing, and real-time social engagement. With millions of active customers across the UK and Ireland, the company runs thousands of always-on campaigns spanning sportsbook, casino, and novelty markets.

Challenge: How to drive scale, while lowering costs 

The paid media team at Paddy Power is known for running high-performing, data-driven campaigns at scale. Always looking to advance their paid social efforts in the competitive landscape, the team set out to explore how AI and automation could help elevate their Meta strategy even further. With a high volume of campaigns already under management, they aimed to boost efficiency, unlock new audiences, and reinvest time into strategic planning. Their ultimate goal was to drive more volume while improving Cost per Acquisition (CPA), their North Star metric for success.

Solution: Pixis Performance and Targeting AI 

After receiving strong recommendations from their colleagues at FanDuel, who had seen impressive results with Pixis, the Paddy Power team decided to explore a partnership.

Acting as an extension of the Paddy Power team, Pixis’ dedicated paid social experts developed a strategy focused on driving scalable growth, while reducing costs. The team also leveraged automation to reduce manual workload, allowing the Paddy Power team to reallocate their time on strategic work. 

The Paddy Power team gave Pixis a set monthly budget with a cost per activation target to hit and their dedicated customer managers then leveraged Performance AI to automatically swift budgets and bids in order to spend the full budget while maintaining the cost per activation target.

In addition, the team leveraged Pixis’ Targeting AI to find new high-value audience cohorts on an ongoing basis in order to keep fine tuning audiences and maximizing performance. They were able to identify and launch cohorts specific for Casino audiences - with specific interest, such as gaming, mobile phones, and many more.

Throughout the collaboration, Pixis maintained a close, hands-on approach, hosting regular check-ins and strategic workshops to ensure continuous optimization and knowledge sharing. The result has been a high-impact partnership built on trust, expertise, and shared goals.

Result: A 9% increase in ROI 

Today, Paddy Power’s Pixis-powered campaigns rank among their most efficient, delivering a 27% increase in volume, a 10% reduction in CPA, and a 9% boost in ROI. The strong results have led to an expanded partnership, with additional brands within the same portfolio now leveraging Pixis. They’re also planning to expand further across channels, regions, and business units.

Beyond the numbers, the collaboration has driven meaningful operational improvements. The team has saved valuable time, deepened their exposure to AI tools, and gained hands-on experience with Pixis ecosystem, enabling them to focus more on strategy and innovation, and less on manual tasks.