The Olympics Are Almost Here: 4 Things TV Marketers Should Know

In an increasingly fragmented media landscape, few events can bring us all together like the Olympics. 

According to a Morning Consult Poll taken earlier this year, a staggering 59% of U.S. adults expect to watch the 2024 Paris Summer Games, which begin July 26. Globally, the games are expected to command an audience of more than 3 BILLION people.

As such, the Paris Olympics present U.S. brands with a unique opportunity to reach more than 150 million captivated consumers who are sure to be glued to the action.

But to capitalize on this opportunity, modern marketers need to know the creative and media tactics proven to move Olympics viewers from awareness to intent. After all, it’s one thing to reach Olympics viewers — and another thing entirely to engage them to purchase. Fortunately, online engagements — like brand searches and website visits — are proven, highly predictive signals of future sales. Compared to other primetime programming, the Olympics drives up to 21.6x as much consumer engagement for the advertising brands.

With this in mind, here are four, data-driven trends brand advertisers should know to make a splash at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

1. Peacock Is Poised For A Big Summer

The 2024 Olympics represent a milestone in the ongoing migration of live sports to the streaming realm. This year, NBCUniversal will stream every sport and event on Peacock, including all 329 medal events — for over 5,000 hours of sports programming.

This shift will present more opportunities for many new advertisers to participate in the Olympics and deliver strong performance for the brands that engage consumers inside the streaming environment.

With Peacock opening its inventory to programmatic buying, advertisers that once may not have had the budget for a linear Olympic sponsorship have the flexibility to get in the game with a more targeted buy that the right fans are sure to see. 

Those advertising on Peacock will likely see powerful performance. According to our data at EDO, ads on Peacock are 23% more likely to generate consumer outcomes than the average ad on linear TV or premium streaming — and one would expect even stronger engagement results for the Paris Olympics.

2. Women’s Basketball Is A Great Bet For Brands

In case you’ve been living under a rock, we’re currently in the midst of a women’s sports renaissance, particularly as it pertains to college and professional basketball. 

While rookie sensation Caitlin Clark might not have made this year’s Olympics team, her fellow WNBA stars have been building momentum for Team USA at the Olympics for years — both on the court and during the ad breaks. And this year’s Games are likely to launch this year’s basketball Olympians into a new level of stardom.

Indeed, for the Women’s Basketball Gold Medal Game at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics consumers were 59% more likely to engage with brand advertisers.

Now, a number of brands are employing the growing star power of WNBA players and Olympians to generate even more engagement. For instance, Nike ads featuring New York Liberty guard Sabrina Ioenscu have been 83% more effective at driving consumer engagement than the brand’s 2024 average, and CarMax ads featuring Ionescu and Las Vegas Aces star A’ja Wilson have been 35% more effective than the brand’s average.

All told, brands have a major opportunity to drive engagement by tying themselves to a team that’s seeking its eighth (8th!) consecutive Olympic gold medal.

3. Primetime Programming Will Be Even More Valuable In Paris

One of the exciting things about this year’s Olympics for U.S. fans and brands is that the Games will be broadcast closer to home from Paris. And American viewers won’t just be excited to see sports in the City of Lights — the six to nine hour time difference is much easier on our busy schedules.

In contrast to the most recent Olympics in Beijing (+12 hours from EST) and Tokyo (+13 hours), the Paris Games will provide more opportunity for live viewing during the day and less time for viewers to be spoiled on social media before catching the results in primetime.

As another point of comparison, primetime ads during the 2016 Olympics in Rio (+1 hour from EST) were 346% more impactful than those during past Games. While Rio generally delivered greater ad impact due to a larger viewership across the board, its overperformance during primetime was larger than during other dayparts.

However you slice it, this year’s Olympics will be even more valuable than it has been during the past several Summer and Winter Games. 

4. Olympics Engagement Stays Strong Throughout The Games

It can’t be helped — most major sporting events show large amounts of variance in consumer engagement as they progress.  For instance, ads were three times more effective during the seventh day of the 2023 NCAA Tournament than during the second day of the event.

But the Olympics are into a game unto themselves — delivering consistently strong performance throughout, with smaller peaks and valleys than other multi-week sports events. Over the past four Olympics, there has been less than a 12% difference in ad engagement between the first day of the Olympics and the last.

As a result, marketers can feel confident that Olympic audiences will engage — driving strong results regardless of when their Olympics ad campaigns are running.

Want to know how your Olympics buy is performing? Let predictive TV outcomes lead you to the gold.

With the stakes higher than ever for marketers, you need to know in real time how your Olympics ads are performing — both to evaluate your media buy and to be ready to optimize your next campaign.

While a complex multi-touch attribution model will tell you your performance months afterward, predictive TV outcomes data can tell you what’s working right away. By tying ad occurrences to the consumer behaviors that occur after the ad airs, EDO helps you see which parts of your campaigns are and are not driving the engagement actions that are most predictive of future sales.

If you’re planning to invest this year - and want real-time TV outcomes to know what works, reach out to schedule a meeting today — we’ll help you stick the landing and capture Olympic marketing gold.

Laura Grover is SVP, Head of Client Solutions of EDO, Inc.

EDO is the TV Outcomes Company — the leading platform for measuring predictive behaviors driven by Convergent TV advertising. Combining real-time engagement signals with world-class decision science, EDO data maximizes TV creative and media performance for leading brands, agencies, networks, streamers, and studios.