What the 2002 FIFA World Cup meant to advertisers

As the curtains fell on the World Cup Football 2002, advertisers and media planners would have rushed back to the drawing board to figure out if they got the bang for their advertising buck. While the viewership data will be out in a couple of days, the advertising expenditure information collected by TAM TV ADEX - which was shared exclusively with agencyfaqs! - throws up some interesting facts. The analysis was for Ten Sports for the period of the World Cup.

According to TAM TV ADEX, the event was somewhat of a slow starter. That is, advertiser interest seemed to go up as the final rounds approached.

Chart 1 clearly displays that there was a 25 per cent increase in advertising time sold during the last two rounds as compared to the League matches pointing to some brands jumping onto the bandwagon a little late.

The overall advertising time according to TAM TV ADEX on Ten Sports in this period was 2,17,697 seconds as shown in Chart 2. Of this, about 52 per cent ad time was on the World Cup while the rest was on other programmes. Of the overall FIFA advertising time, Highlights consumed more than the Live matches. Says Atul Phadnis, director, S-Group, TAM Media Research, "There is an upper limit on how many ads the channel can accommodate during a live event. On Highlights, however, the channel can take longer breaks and create more properties. Plus the Highlights were taking place during peak viewing time which means that even advertisers would have preferred some exposure during the Highlights itself."

So which were the top brands on FIFA? And did all these brands buy in the same fashion?

A brandwise analysis shows some interesting trends. Chart 3 showcases the Top 10 advertisers on Ten Sports in terms of time bought on FIFA. While Pepsi, DSP Merrill Lynch, Mirinda and Pru ICICI displayed a preference for match Highlights, Videocon Bazzon, Akai, Kenstar and Sansui seemed to prefer the Live event. In fact, if we look at the Top 10 advertisers only on the Live event instead of the total, we find some new names like TVS Fiero, HP Racer4 and Hero Honda - clearly indicating their preference for Live instead of Repeats.

It will be interesting to see which of these two strategies was better once the TAM viewership numbers come out in the next couple of days.

Now let us look at the top categories of advertisers and the profile of the target audience.

Chart 4 indicates most of the categories were trying to attract the adult males, a few were there to target the youth. The most surprising aspect is the fact that of the 35-odd categories present on Ten Sports during FIFA, the Top 5 alone accounted for almost 70 per cent of the time bought! Which means that the rest 30 had to slug it out between them for the rest of the advertising time.

Thus with so many brands and advertisers hooking their fortune on to the World Cup, it would be interesting to see which ones managed to kick the winning goal and those that fell short of striking distance. And that would be clear in a few days - once the TAM viewership data is released. © 2002 agencyfaqs!