The Big Game: Reaching the Right Audience Has Never Been Easier
This article originally appeared in Marketing Toolbox
By: Ryan Horn, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Simpli.fi
With the Big Game quickly approaching and marking the end of the NFL season, advertisers are clamoring at the opportunity to be involved in one of the largest TV events of the year. Each year this game rakes in over 100 million television viewers. However, the way people watch the event has started to change over the past few years. Although overall viewership of last year’s game was down, it was the first game to break the record with 1 billion total streaming minutes. The full week provides advertisers with one of the largest opportunities of the year to reach a massive audience across all their devices, while still maintain the impact of linear TV.
ALL EYES ON DECK
Advertisers need to capitalize on the fact that viewers don’t just tune in to the game itself, rather they spend the whole weekend watching analysis and receiving updates in preparation. There will be an audience for the pre-game show, festivities in the host city of Los Angeles, team interviews during media week, and more, which all serve as ways to connect. With all the events, advertisers have an extended amount of time to place advertisements in front of their desired target market as so many people will be streaming content. Most importantly, people will be accessing content from more than their big screen. Viewers will be on their phones receiving updates and on other devices, which opens the door to targeting viewers in more places than just their TV.
DO MORE FOR LESS
It is no secret that since there are so many viewers, the Big Game is one of the most expensive TV events to advertise during. This year, it is being reported that NBC is asking for as much as $6.5 million for a 30-second ad during the game. This price tag creates the notion in the minds of thousands of businesses that they will be unable to get involved at national scale. Truth is that advertisers can utilize many different tools to land their content in front of their desired audiences. CTV ads can get the same commercial in front of the intended audience at a far lower cost. Along with that, CTV advertisements can target users no matter what content they are viewing as they can be targeted based on their online behaviors. They do not have to be only watching the game to still be a successful target in a campaign.
GEO-FENCING, AN INDISPENSIBLE BENEFIT
The Big Game also provides a unique opportunity as it allows advertisers to geo-fence locations that have a relevant audience. The stadium team hotels, the host city, events based around the game, locations in participating cities, and more, can all be utilized to create audiences of relevant users. These audiences are highly relevant since advertisers will know that the users have taken action to be to in these specific locations which takes planning, travel and often a high cost of entry. In other words, these aren’t causal fans! Since there are so many side events during the week of the game, advertisers can take advantage of capturing the audiences at those locations and retarget them during and after the fact. When the game is over, those who were tagged in a geo-fenced area can still be retargeted after the game with the advertisers knowing they were interested in the event when it occurred. They can also be served ads not only on the device they carried to the event, but across all the devices in their house, including the TV. Additionally, with the granular reporting and attribution capabilities available, brands can track both online and offline conversions. This enables the advertiser to track what amount of website traffic and physical storefront traffic was driven by each individual geo-fence from the big game weekend.
CTV campaigns can provide advertisers with a unique opportunity to distribute high impact ad campaigns to relevant audiences. While many advertisers sit back during the big week wondering how they can break through the noise, those who take advantage of a programmatic platform are best set up to succeed. It is no secret that the number of people streaming the game will increase, fans will be tied to all their devices not just their TVs, and the full weekend provides advertisers with many opportunities to connect with their desired audiences. On top of that, real-time reporting is also available so advertisers can better understand the performance of their campaigns. That gives them the power to quickly adapt and reallocate budget to higher performing channels and markets. With TV’s largest event coming up, every advertiser has an opportunity to get involved.
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