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Challenges
The first series of the BBC’s The Celebrity Traitors quickly became a cultural moment, building on the success of previous civilian series and continuing to grow its audience year over year. With each series raising the bar, this latest launch presented an opportunity to drive incremental growth, capturing new viewers while sustaining momentum among an already highly engaged fanbase.
Audiences followed every twist, betrayal, and social moment as they unfolded, with viewing and conversation happening in parallel across platforms. The real momentum came from how audiences engaged with the show in real time and how that conversation evolved with each new episode.
The BBC, in partnership with its agency Havas, set out to capitalise on this energy by reaching fans when anticipation, emotion, and social chatter were at their peak, ensuring that media aligned with the evolving mindset of viewers as the series progressed.
Methodology & Strategy
GumGum partnered with the BBC to build a mindset-led strategy rooted in continuous learning and optimisation to drive better results. Using GumGum’s Mindset Graph™, the campaign brought together signals such as content, engagement, and behaviour to understand what viewers were most receptive to in each moment.
Rather than relying on a single signal or static targeting, this approach helped identify when audiences were most open to the campaign message and prioritise those high-value moments. This ensured media aligned not just with what people were viewing, but how they were engaging and feeling as the series unfolded.
The campaign continued to evolve in step with the series, using mindset insights and celebrity fandom shifts to inform optimisation over time and maximise attention during key moments of engagement.
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Performance & Results
By combining BBC’s cultural momentum with ongoing mindset alignment and weekly creative refreshes, the campaign stayed tightly connected to how audiences were experiencing the show in real time, helping to sustain and grow viewership across the series as momentum built toward the finale. This success was further reflected in the show’s broader cultural impact, with The Celebrity Traitors going on to win Best Reality Programme and the Memorable Moment award at the TV BAFTAs, while also becoming the most-watched programme of the year. Growth was reflected across platforms, with iPlayer continuing to account for a growing share of total viewing.
Creative variations ran in short bursts and were updated weekly to reflect shifting narratives, emerging personalities, and growing anticipation. Early in the series, launch creative capitalised on initial buzz, driving the strongest immediate attention at scroll-in. As the season progressed, later executions built engagement more gradually, sustaining interest deeper into the ad experience as storylines intensified and fan investment grew.
By pairing evolving creative with continuous optimisation through the Mindset Graph™ by evaluating multiple signals in real time to prioritise the moments where viewers are most receptive, the campaign didn’t just align with context, it aligned with conversation. The result was sustained, high-impact attention throughout the series, reaching viewers in the moments they were most emotionally engaged and contributing to continued audience growth through to the finale.
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