NIL FanBox is a subscription box brand offering university-approved, player-endorsed autographed athlete memorabilia to college sports fans, giving supporters a direct way to own game-tied, autographed pieces from their favorite programs while putting money directly in athletes' hands through NIL.
For fans who bleed their school's colors, NIL FanBox's boxes are as much a way to support the athletes they root for as they are a collectible. Reaching that audience — and converting it into subscribers — meant meeting fans where they already follow their teams: on social media, through the athletes themselves.
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How NIL FANBOX USED ATHLETE whitelisting TO reduce cpa by 44%
89k
total impressions
$5
cost per acquisition
44%
below industry CPA
The Brand
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The challenge
Subscription box brands built around a specific fan base face a distinct set of marketing challenges:
• Narrow, loyalty-driven audience: FanBox's product only resonates with fans who deeply identify with a specific school, making broad-reach advertising inefficient
• Need for authenticity: Fans respond to athletes they already follow, not generic ad creative
• Balancing scale across schools: Testing UNC and Cal simultaneously meant working with very different sizes of fan audience data at once
• Driving a specific, measurable action: Beyond impressions, NIL FanBox needed a clear cost-per-lead number to prove the channel out, not just awareness
NIL FanBox needed a way to convert fan loyalty into subscribers - and a clear, trackable conversion metric to prove it was working - by pairing authentic athlete-driven creative with the paid social precision to identify what worked, then scale it fast.
• Narrow, loyalty-driven audience: FanBox's product only resonates with fans who deeply identify with a specific school, making broad-reach advertising inefficient
• Need for authenticity: Fans respond to athletes they already follow, not generic ad creative
• Balancing scale across schools: Testing UNC and Cal simultaneously meant working with very different sizes of fan audience data at once
• Driving a specific, measurable action: Beyond impressions, NIL FanBox needed a clear cost-per-lead number to prove the channel out, not just awareness
NIL FanBox needed a way to convert fan loyalty into subscribers - and a clear, trackable conversion metric to prove it was working - by pairing authentic athlete-driven creative with the paid social precision to identify what worked, then scale it fast.
The ask
NIL FanBox partnered with MOGL to launch an Athlete Whitelisting program leveraging the "Athlete Paid Social" offering to:
1) Drive targeted, high-intent traffic to the NIL FanBox subscription sign-up page
2) Generate subscription leads at volume and at an efficient cost per lead
Test athlete creative and audience combinations across partner schools to identify the top-performing path
3) Build a foundation to scale spend behind whatever combination performed best
Primary audience: College sports fans (30+) who are deeply loyal to a specific program — alumni, boosters, and collectors who follow current athletes on social media and want an authentic, player-endorsed way to support them
1) Drive targeted, high-intent traffic to the NIL FanBox subscription sign-up page
2) Generate subscription leads at volume and at an efficient cost per lead
Test athlete creative and audience combinations across partner schools to identify the top-performing path
3) Build a foundation to scale spend behind whatever combination performed best
Primary audience: College sports fans (30+) who are deeply loyal to a specific program — alumni, boosters, and collectors who follow current athletes on social media and want an authentic, player-endorsed way to support them
The Solution
MOGL built a structured Athlete Paid Social program around NIL FanBox's core value proposition: university-approved, player-endorsed memorabilia. Which pairs college athletes with a Meta whitelisting test across two partner schools. MOGL built an athlete-led Instagram program designed to blend authenticity, cultural relevance, and paid media amplification.
Program structure
• 2 college athletes: JJ Jones (UNC Football) and Annalise Newman-Achee (Cal)
• Deliverables: 2 whitelisted (Partnership Ads) creative paths, one per athlete, tested across 4 ad sets
• Content: Athlete-fronted paid social creative promoting each school's autographed memorabilia box
• Format: Two whitelisting campaigns (one per school), each testing Interest-Based vs. Alumni audience targeting
Creative Approach
• Peer and fan credibility: running creative through each athlete's own whitelisted handle gave NIL FanBox's boxes instant authenticity with that school's fan base
• Multi-audience testing: splitting spend between interest-based and alumni targeting for each school surfaced which audience converts best per program
• Cost-efficient optimization: shifting toward landing-page-view optimization is delivering a meaningfully lower cost per lead than Meta's pixel-based lead objective
Program structure
• 2 college athletes: JJ Jones (UNC Football) and Annalise Newman-Achee (Cal)
• Deliverables: 2 whitelisted (Partnership Ads) creative paths, one per athlete, tested across 4 ad sets
• Content: Athlete-fronted paid social creative promoting each school's autographed memorabilia box
• Format: Two whitelisting campaigns (one per school), each testing Interest-Based vs. Alumni audience targeting
Creative Approach
• Peer and fan credibility: running creative through each athlete's own whitelisted handle gave NIL FanBox's boxes instant authenticity with that school's fan base
• Multi-audience testing: splitting spend between interest-based and alumni targeting for each school surfaced which audience converts best per program
• Cost-efficient optimization: shifting toward landing-page-view optimization is delivering a meaningfully lower cost per lead than Meta's pixel-based lead objective
The Results
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Athlete Paid Social proved out as an efficient, trackable channel for driving NIL FanBox subscription leads — giving NIL FanBox a clear cost-per-lead benchmark to scale against, and MOGL a live proof point for what APS can do beyond impressions and engagement.
Performance Metrics
Total Impressions: 89,480
Leads Generated: 103
Cost Per Lead (CPA): $5.01
Cost Per Click: $0.20
Industry Average CPA : 9.03
CPA performance: 44% lower
Leads Generated: 103
Cost Per Lead (CPA): $5.01
Cost Per Click: $0.20
Industry Average CPA : 9.03
CPA performance: 44% lower
Top Performing Athlete
JJ Jones: 28,166 impressions, 34 leads, $0.15 CPC