Sports: The Last Mono-Culture Media Event. The last bastion of a mass audience. Arguably, the last piece of content impervious to the fracturing media landscape. That’s why advertisers love it—no need to gather sticks and twigs of content like firewood or mine through piles of content gravel to find valuable audience gold.
Every four years, this sports media monoculture in the U.S. peaks. The gold is handed to the victors, and the wood fuels the eternal flame of the Summer Olympic Games. Not only does it bring the country together, but the Olympic media rights come together to be aired by one company.
Media buyers and advertisers tolerate the minor inconveniences of sports media rights as multiple networks and platforms share the air for major American sports. NBC, Disney (ESPN/ABC), Fox, and Amazon share the NFL. The same players (minus Fox) own parts of the NBA. MLB and NHL spread their games across a similar landscape. But the Olympics are different.
All that pageantry, all that sweat, all the victorious thrill and agonizing defeat—and the chance to advertise around it—is consolidated under one media group, NBCUniversal.
This consolidation can create pricing challenges (one company with no competition) while providing advertisers with some noticeable unique advantages if you have the right buying partner to leverage them. So, let’s look at what you can do with the right partner:
- Many events will be exclusively on NBCU’s streaming service, Peacock. Advertisers who have been skeptical about the value of streaming services (and all the incredible audience data they provide) can now lean into CTV in a safe, “apples to apples” genre like sports and make it part of a “TV Everywhere” omni-strategy with ease.
- The summer is usually slow, but the Olympics bring a fervent fan base to their screens for a full fortnight of sports. (If you need to be reminded of the value of sports, go back to the top and read again.) There is a sport for everyone in the Summer Games. The audience is willing to watch your message and associate it with patriotism if done right.
- Let Olympic fever lead your August strategic planning. Before your brand thinks about the fall, you can kick off August with the highly-rated finals of many top events like basketball (featuring NBA stars), gymnastics (hello, Simone Biles), and the crowning of the “Fastest Man Alive.” There’s no reason to sit out August with these headlines happening across multiple screens.
Diray’s multi-disciplined expertise helps our clients target the right times, events, and audiences in the Olympics. Our linear buying prowess is unmatched, and our superior knowledge of Peacock’s audience targeting capabilities has many calling us the Stream Team for driving higher client ROAS in these games. With all those American eyes watching across channels like NBC, USA, CNBC, MSNBC, and Peacock, advertisers need to take advantage of well-tested expertise to guide them to success.
For those brands that partner with Diray, the athletes won’t be the only ones bringing home gold over the next two weeks