The Germans may have walked away with this year’s FIFA World Cup, but the real winners of the international tournament were the advertisers.
To put things into better perspective, the FIFA World Cup 2014 was declared ‘the most social event in history’, in reference to the expected levels of social media engagement from football fans across the globe. According to eMarketer, digital advertising spending in Brazil jumped 28.0% this year and is expected to reach nearly $5 billion on digital media by the time the tournament hits Russia in 2018.
Big brands invested heavily in the potential of online engagement with approximately half of Adidas’ World Cup media expenditure going to online in contrast to the one fifth spent on online advertising during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. The audience of the World Cup is extraordinary, with somewhere near 400 million tuning in to watch the final match. eMarketer claims 37% of soccer fans worldwide said they accessed a mobile ad daily to get match updates and, according to Google, 63% of this year’s World Cup searches were made on mobile devices.
With so much online engagement revolving around the FIFA World Cup, it’s no wonder that social media channels have proved to be important advertising platforms. The overall winner of the Advertising World Cup, however, is none other than streaming goliath YouTube. Voxburner’s latest research, examining the lasting brand impacts on consumers during the World Cup among British 16 to 24 year olds, found that 27% of participants remembered YouTube ads with a higher degree of the male contingent at 37%. Facebook follows close behind with 26%, then Google with 25% and Twitter claiming 23%.
If the success of digital advertising during the World Cup and, in particular, social media advertising is anything to go by, the relevance of advertising on these platforms is set to increase.
The value of integrated promotion across multiple channels was again proven early on when Cristiano Ronaldo Tweeted about Nike’s second World Cup ad released on its YouTube page. The ensuing hype generated over 70 million views in a matter of days. If nothing else, ponder on this: there were more tweets about the 2014 World Cup before a ball had even been kicked than for the entire tournament in 2010.
The experienced team at Infodec Communications frequently use social media platforms as a part of an integrated marketing strategy so that our clients can better engage with their consumers in this digital age.
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