Impression Boosts Cancer Research UK Donations, Despite National Decline in Charity Giving

Sep. 10, 2025

2025: Performance marketing agency Impression’s latest PPC campaign for Cancer Research UK has boosted value-based-bidding signups for the charity’s 2025 5k Race for Life series to reach 110% of the target, despite a national decline in charity giving. 

In 2025, an estimated four million fewer people are donating to charity compared to before Covid, according to the Charities Aid Foundation. Contributions were particularly low among younger people, with only 36% of 16 to 24-year-olds donating or sponsoring somebody over the past year, compared with 52% in 2019. 

Against this backdrop, Impression has worked with Cancer Research UK to increase engagement for its annual Race for Life series, which involves hundreds of 3k, 5k, 10k, and Pretty Muddy obstacle course events across the country. Although the 5k runs are usually the most popular, and were identified as a key opportunity to boost fundraising, signups for this length were behind target by the start of 2025. 

The challenge Cancer Research UK and Impression faced was that most supporters searching for Race for Life used brand terms or phrases like “run for cancer,” without specifying the type of event. Only 21% of clicks during this period came from keywords containing “5k”. They therefore needed to find ways to turn these broader searches into sign-ups for specific event types. 

Impression set out to boost engagement by improving the campaign’s existing Value-Based-Bidding marketing strategy. This involved using existing floodlight data from the Race for Life website to create a Value-Based-Bidding hierarchy, to drive people already interested in participating in a charity run towards the events with the highest fundraising potential.  

Following Impression’s updates, the percentage of 5k signups (compared with other events) rose from 31% in early January to 42% a week after launching Value-Based-Bidding. PPC delivered more than 17,000 sign-ups in January, which was 110% of the target. 

Mikey Emery, Commercial Director at Impression, said:

"It’s been a privilege to work with Cancer Research UK to help them boost signups for the Race for Life 5k. As the run which usually generates the most engagement and donations, it’s vital that the 5k event is easily discoverable. By implementing a bespoke Value-Based-Bidding workaround, we effectively upweighted the high-priority 5k sign-ups and specifically down weighted the events with lower targets, ensuring PPC spend is optimised towards Cancer Research UK’s most important objective."

 

Lucy Salazar, Senior Marketing Manager at Cancer Research, said: 

"Impression is a really great agency to work with - the team are extremely proactive, reliable and honest. Over the past year, they have made innovative suggestions and are really receptive to our ideas. The team have a proactive attitude in driving forward tests and optimisations."