Four ways to win marketing gold with the Olympics
This year's Olympics will offer more opportunities than ever before for marketers to get their message to the right audience. Rick Mulia reveals four ways to capture the attention of the digitally engaged 'always on' sports fan.
With only weeks until the torch is lit in Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, many brand marketers are asking themselves if it is too late to get in on the largest sporting event in the world.
At the same time, publishers are seeking to identify new ways to capture their share of the marketing gold that will pour into the games globally.
With 30-second prime-time television spots fetching more than one million dollars each, it’s obvious why many smaller advertisers may have opted out of the initial burst of spend that led NBC to surpass $1 billion in advertising well before the actual start of the Olympics – a feat they did not accomplish until much closer to the London games in 2012.
The good news for publishers is that with more than 6,000 hours of programming planned for this year’s event – the most ever in Summer Olympics history – there will be a plethora of content available to capture the attention of the digitally engaged ‘always on’ sports fan this summer.
For brands seeking to engage Olympics fans, a new survey also sheds positive light onto the dramatically shifting behaviours of sports fans and provides a marketing road map for reaching the always on digitally connected Olympics fan. Consider just these four insights from this recent research:
- Rio de Janeiro will be the first truly 24/7, ‘always on’ Olympics: No one television station or online outlet will control the narrative or the audience as fans turn to live blogs, mobile video, sports websites and social media for real-time updates and post event highlights. Most sports fans plan to follow the Olympics online with more than four out of 10 also planning to cut the cord and watch events live streaming online. The rise of the ‘always on’ sports fan enables content consumption at any time, on any device from a near infinite number of content sources. The most time constrained sports fans – young parents – are consuming sports videos every day online and will be looking for shorter highlight clips throughout the Olympics rather than sitting through full-length programming.
- Millennials are leading the digital pack: Highly coveted millennial audiences are turning away from television and to digital outlets for their Olympics content. They are twice as likely to consume Olympics content on their mobile device (71% versus 31%) and nearly eight out of 10 (79%) will cut the television cord to watch the Olympics live online.
- Second screen presents a second chance for gold: As television advertising for the Olympics reaches a premium, 57% of Olympic followers note they will have a second screen open when watching the Olympics. And millennial Olympic fans are more than twice as likely to have a second screen open “most or all of the time” compared to non-millennials (82% versus 48%).
- The ideal digital consumer: Higher Income + Higher Propensity for Online Purchasing: 57% of Olympic followers have an annual household income above $50K (versus 32% non-followers) and they are more than twice as likely to make purchases online weekly (32% versus 15%).
The results of the consumer survey highlight what anecdotally many have seen firsthand in the run-up to the Summer games – this year’s Olympics represents the first time the Games have truly become a 24/7 experience. 
The way in which sports fans plan to consume Olympics content will undergo dramatic change as mobile and online video draw millions of eyeballs away from traditional television and open new opportunities for both content creators and advertisers with hundreds of millions of connected ‘always on’ sports fans just as likely to watch an event on television as they are to stream a game online from work or watch a highlight clip on their mobile device from the road.
Both advertisers and publishers have an opportunity to leverage the shifting behaviours of sports fans and go for gold by creating compelling content and targeted advertising for audiences that are seeking deeper connectivity in real-time with the games, athletes, scores and cultural news related to the world’s largest sporting event.
Rick Mulia is managing director – JAPAC, at Rubicon Project
