On the 10th February 2015, a fierce bidding war ensued between Sky Sports and BT Sport for broadcast rights to the English Premier League. Sky was forced to spend a staggering £4.176 billion to retain the maximum possible number of matches (126 games). BT Sport won the remaining games (42 games).

TV advertising and Football/soccer has become so powerful a combination that the English FA with a good team of lawyers and rights experts were able to secure this 70% increase in revenues from the two broadcasters. All 20 Premiership clubs will be queuing up to congratulate the FA for such a vast increase in wealth.

However when broadcasters are forced to pay more to televise a sport, brands have to pay more to advertise. The broadcaster has to make their money back somehow. In an interview with Ad Age, Honda’s assistant vice president for advertising, Tom Peyton, argues that the cost of advertising is now so high that they are forced to choose only a few events to engage with. Honda spends more than $600 million on U.S. television advertising annually, sponsoring the Honda Classic golf tournament, the Rose Bowl’s Rose Parade, and the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks.

FedEx are another brand which had advertised in the US Super Bowl sports event for 19 years consecutively until 2009, but then stopped. They have never returned. It simply costs too much and is no longer returning a profitable ROI for their brand.

The vast amount of choice available to consumers now with the internet, cable TV and other entertainment options, consumers are rarely watching the same TV channel. Brand advertisers aiming to reach a large amount of people have until now paid the increasing rates to advertise, but with the rise of competitive offerings from online channels like Facebook are their days numbered?

YouCom Media and its subsidiaries focus on planning media advertising that will meet a client’s ROI targets. There will come a time when we tell clients who represent some of the major brands that the ROI of advertising on Sky Sports or BT Sports for the English Premier League no longer delivers against their ROI targets. And if the advertisers stop advertising, Sky will struggle to survive a £4 billion debt.

Required reference:

YouCom Media News article, Feb 2015, London, TV Advertising in the Premiership’

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Where will consumers be most receptive to advertising?

The face of local search engines has changed a lot over the last 18 years. The above infographic shows interesting patterns of websites that have come and gone but also patterns of the future. Twitter is now in the top ten and widely expected to supersede Facebook very soon. Ask Jeeves which became Ask.com is still in the top twenty and likely to future partner with the larger directory networks.

Brands must reach out to consumers wherever it is that consumers are now using. We publicised this changing face of local search article on our Twitter feed. Would we have done so a few years ago?

Certainly we see the struggle between Yahoo and Google playing out over the last dozen years. General consensus is that Google is all supreme and has won that battle, but 2013 was an odd year seeing many developments at Yahoo and popularity regained.

Many sites have come and gone, many we no longer remember, but the nature of the worldwide web is one of ever changing faces and we need only be concerned about where we should have presence now (and in the future).

In 2014, more consumers engaged with brands on social media than ever before and our own social media serves as an example with many re-tweets and favourites for posts.

In 2015, B2C advertisers should be looking to create a managed YouTube page whose videos can be used to drive calls and leads.

B2C advertisers should ensure they have a Facebook page because that is still the second most used platform in our infographic, but it is widely anticipated that Facebook’s dominance will decline and Twitter become more relevant to consumers.

Therefore B2C advertisers would do well to create Twitter feeds where they can promote their messages, create engagement with their consumers and manage brand sentiment. Generally the more the merrier, so multi-location brands ought to consider campaigns of multiple Twitter and Facebook pages.

B2B advertisers are seeing a trend towards LinkedIn and Slideshare for social media channels showing rapid growth.

To reference data from this article, please use: ‘YouCom Media Whitepaper, Jan 2015, London, The changing face of local search worldwide since 1996’

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