Post Mortem: World Cup & Social Media Advertising

Last night, Germany won the World Cup. They played consistently throughout the tournament and ended up with the cherished trophy after defeating Argentina in extra time.

But perhaps even more interesting is this impressive fact about social media advertising from Business Insider: Advertisers are spending nearly as much on world cup social media campaigns as they do on Super Bowl TV ads. This is a huge shift in placement of ad dollars. As BI states: “Advertisers have spent millions of dollars on social media campaigns tied to the World Cup, and showed a new willingness to shift ad budgets into social media for the event, according to digital ad firms responsible for channeling those ad buys.”

Instead of focusing on print and TV ads, it seems some of the big players are truly seeing the impact and reach of social media. From BI: Over the last few years, ad buyers have increased their social marketing budgets around big events like the Olympics and World Cup. “They’re absolutely willing to spend more on social,” says Doug Chavez, global head of marketing research at Kenshoo, a digital marketing firm.

James Donner, of SocialCode, told BI that Facebook sponsored posts got a majority of the spend, but there was also a significant investment in promoted tweets as well.  Donner also pointed out that most sponsored posts featured photos because, “text posts don’t get traction.”

Finally, it seems like the investments paid off. World Cup-related ads performed extremely well. Another snippet from BI: “World Cup-linked campaigns received two-times to 10-times the rate of engagement (likes, comments, shares) of average social media campaigns, according to SocialCode. And while the cost of social media ad buys for World Cup-linked campaigns went up by about 20% from normal rates, that was more than compensated by the ability to reach more people.”

Real-time programming coupled with compelling content results in high engagement. Can’t wait to see what the big players have in store for next year’s Women’s World Cup!

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