GfK and Netquest share the challenges and solutions to generate more effective advertising strategies at football events.

Football is a great platform to connect brands with viewers, but not all teams have the same fans, leagues profile them in different ways and it is important to know their audiences to identify the most suitable one for each brand. For this reason, the consulting firm GfK and Netquest share the results they found to help marketing areas interested in understanding the profiles of the fans of each national or international league and team, validate their possible efficiency as a vehicle for connecting with their current and potential consumers and create assertive strategies for their brands.

There are 3 main challenges:

Ensuring exposure or not to the matches with real observed data is much better than just asking, since it guarantees greater precision and fewer biases in the information, which by involving high budget investments will favor more accurate decision-making.

360 understanding. Today sporting events can be followed on different open or pay television channels, radio and/or various digital platforms. This opens up a world of possibilities for advertising patterns, which can be better understood both at the audience level and at the impact and response level among viewers.

Historical analysis. Unlike the limitations of cookies, which only allow detection with prior planning, the current technology of the panels allows the information of its participants to be collected permanently, both by URLs in the digital world and by “audiomatching” in the analog world, with which it is possible to rescue the historical information of those exposed or not exposed for a historical analysis of their behaviors and better plan the following seasons.

The best solutions for these challenges lie in two elements: single-source panel and continuous data. The single-source panel is a method of collecting information that works thanks to panelists who provide information that helps to know the consumer in a more specific way:

Its demographic, geographic and various aspects profiling, which totals 600 variables in more than 20 categories with regular updates from the panelists.

Their digital behavior: obtaining the multi-device activity of the panelists 24/7 on various platforms, social networks, streaming, online purchases, etc. by detecting URLs.

Audio-matching data through an SDK technology installed on the panelists' mobile devices, which passively captures the audio content they consume in any medium, with a match that ranges from 10 seconds to the desired exposure time; for example in a soccer game.

Data declared through brief specific surveys regarding the relationship with a brand and its competition, preferences, etc.

Continuous data is derived from the panel. Thanks to the passive and continuous collection of data, a sample can be followed for prolonged periods and, therefore, access information from the past.

In a study carried out in Mexico during 2021, said data from 1,500 panelists was analyzed. GfK and Netquest found that 81% of them were exposed to one of the MX and Champions League finals in 2021 (68% on TV and 13% on digital).

They noticed a 55% connection between both leagues. Speaking of incremental (exclusive) reaches, the MX final achieved 12%, while the Champions achieved 14%; both with similar demographic characteristics, but what was truly relevant were other profiles that further describe the lifestyles of the fans of each league, such as life away from home, education and financial behaviors or online shopping habits, among others, which is related to the effect that viewers had on their knowledge, opinion, consideration and/or relationship with certain sponsoring brands of each league.