Boosting ROI on Sports Advertising Through TV Ad Sync
Big sporting events offer a huge opportunity for brands to advertise their products and services to a massive audience that watches these events on TV.
The coronavirus pandemic put a halt on the live sporting events, but now the professional sports have started returning and are setting up TV viewership records. In the month of June this year, new TV viewership records were set by the Golf channel when it broadcasted the Charles Schwab Challenge, which is a professional golf tournament played every year in Texas. Overall, the four days TV viewership for this golf tournament was more than seventy-eight percent this year in comparison to the viewership in 2019.
In the same month, LaLiga, which is one of the top European football leagues, witnessed its increase in the global viewership of more than forty-eight percent on the 1st match day of the soccer league’s restart. According to Nielsen Sports, matches that were played during the period between 11 and 14 June, witnessed TV viewership growth across the world including Asian countries. There was a fifty-six percent increase in TV viewership across Europe – a forty-six percent increase in Denmark, twelve percent in Spain, and an impressive one hundred and thirty percent in Belgium. In South Africa, there was a whopping two hundred and ten percent increase in TV viewership.
It is clear from the above data that sporting events are setting up new TV viewership records by satisfying a massive sport-starved audience. Huge TV viewership of live, professional sports content implies tremendous opportunities for marketers. But the landscape for marketers is changing. There is increased competition for ad inventories, and customer preferences and buying habits have evolved in comparison to pre-pandemic times.
But apart from these above-mentioned obstacles, there is a major problem that is reducing the return on investment on TV advertising for brands. It is the cross-screen behavior of consumers, which means that while watching TV, people tend to gaze into their mobile devices, especially when TV commercials are running. This second-screen behavior increases the chances of people not watching TV commercials, leading to wasting of ads for marketers.
TV ad sync provides the remedy to this serious problem. It is a cross-platform advertising technology, also known as second-screen advertising technology, and involves simultaneously showing the same or similar ads on the TV screens and smartphones of consumers. For showing ads on mobile phones, this technology utilizes social media apps. With this second-screen marketing technology, relevant communications from brands can also be delivered on mobile devices right at the time when an important moment takes place in a game, for example, a catch in a cricket game.
TV sync advertising technology can be used by a brand to sync its own ads on TV and smartphone or sync a competitor’s ad on television with its own ad on mobile devices. The former is called self-sync, while the latter is known as competition sync.
TV ad sync technology enables brands to effectively capitalize on the full advertising potential that professional sports offer and get maximum return on investment.