Hardly any other form of advertising has come close to matching the development of sponsorship in recent years. Here, top-level sports in particular provide sponsors and partners with an emotional and high-reach advertising and communication platform. Since sponsors ultimately ride "piggyback," they benefit from the continued increase in overall reach and interaction. The sports fan searches for and finds the content that is relevant to him - ultimately regardless of the channel.
Sponsors and partners Sponsors and partners increasingly have their own content marketing and storytelling to activate and boost the effect of the relatively meaningless presentation of the brand. of the brand through their own content marketing and storytelling.
The evaluation of a sponsorship platform and KPIs for measuring the return on sponsorship investments (ROSI) are usually based on a combination of media coverage/advertising performance and the measurement of other value-creating elements from the sponsorship contract. While marketers still argue on the basis of the equivalent advertising value of a sponsorship, sponsors use the value of a sponsorship, sponsors are increasingly using KPIs that quantify the return on (ROO).
However, the central role of media analysis in sponsorship is not only crumbling at this point. For years, the prices for media analysis in sponsorship have been eroding, despite massively increasing demands due to the fragmented media landscape, OTT channels and social media. The goal of drawing as comprehensive a picture as possible of the reach and promotional contacts achieved for sponsors, and thus providing an essential building block for evaluation, is clearly losing relevance.
Provider Media Analysis
What are suppliers doing to survive to survive in this extremely competitive market? While market leader Nielsen, for example, records Sports records TV broadcasts at great expense and counters price pressure by with the appropriate automation of its production facilities in India (just recently (only recently, the Israeli company vBrand, which specializes in logo recognition by means of AI/ML vBrand from Israel), some competitors are taking a completely different competitors are taking a completely different path.
Why elaborate recording, when you can read in the program guide when, where and and how long an event will be broadcast on TV. And if you call this procedure "Schedule Auditing" then it sounds more weighty. That here 20% and more of the coverage in news and sports magazines go unnoticed. is in the nature of things.
Why analyze the visibility of a sponsor in actual recordings, when you can "sufficiently" extrapolate this can be "sufficiently" extrapolated on the basis of short YouTube videos.
And why for the officially measured TV stations, if supposedly elaborately produced estimation models if supposedly elaborately produced estimation models deliver good results after all. But even names such as "Audience Estimation Model" tend to deceive about the actual the actual quality. Alternatively, coverage is dispensed with altogether and only the gross advertising price shown by the broadcaster is used as the basis for the as the basis for the evaluation - if available at the time.
One supplier in particular with Anglo-Saxon roots has been pushing onto the continental European market in recent years with aggressive pricing on the continental European market. Unfortunately, the modern layout of the reports does not go hand in hand with methodical care. At times, the rule is: Internet research x extrapolation x estimated value = Advertising Equivalent Value (AVE)
Missing standards
Due to the lack of standards, it is also up to the creativity of the customer to set a few parameters in the analysis in such a way that a high or less high advertising equivalency value is calculated. is calculated. Whether 20 million or 2 million advertising equivalence - as long as one can use methodological levers to increase the valuation of an engagement many times over, both figures are in both figures are not wrong in case of doubt - but neither are they correct. correct. A "currency" for sponsoring is not yet available, even after years of efforts of the relevant professional associations in Germany is still a long way off. A small consolation: internationally, the standards are in some cases even more meager.
If, despite correct If, despite the correct analysis, we also apply a quality weighting for sponsorship visibility such as the QI from Nielsen Sports, whose rather complex calculation method based on five criteria criteria is only known to insiders of the scene (QI = Quality Index index, weighting of the gross advertising value by approx. 75%), the intransparency and comparability of intransparency and comparability of service providers as well as the comparability with other genres, such as public relations, is further artificially more difficult.
Since the actual sponsorship amounts paid, despite weighting, are usually only a fraction of the of the reported AVEs, one ultimately gets the impression that the multiple only has to be high enough to avoid further questions. The positive year-on-year trends are already due to the fact that the gross the fact that gross advertising prices serve as the basis for calculating the AVE. is used. These have actually been rising for years, while the actual net values, at least in classic TV, have been falling continuously; keyword Gross-net gap.
Another major challenge for all parties arises from the transfer of essential OTT channels such as Magenta Sport, DAZN, Eurosport Player and others - and we are certainly only at the we are certainly only at the beginning of this development. Neither are there reliable reach models along the lines of the AGF/GFK, nor are corresponding nor is there any systematic, cross-platform collection of the relevant data. For sponsorship, whose most important sales argument is still reach with an emotional with an emotional anchor, is actually an untenable state of affairs.
Digital / Social
The DiPeC of the Association of Sponsorship Providers (VSA) offers a digital performance card for websites, apps, newsletters and Social Media a digital performance card with traceable logic. A very very good approach in itself. Points of criticism arise in that the advertising metrics of reach and interactions despite completely different are calculated with only one sponsorship CPM. In addition, the hot potato the hot potato of CPMs, and thus the basis for calculating the monetary is not presented at all.
Recently the agency Lobeco has published a very good and target-oriented advance on social media evaluation. published. With its clear focus on cost per engagement (CPE) and concrete and concrete proposals for its measurement, the proliferation of social media media valuation metrics a pragmatic and comprehensible end. Nevertheless, there is still plenty of room for discussion. For example platforms such as Facebook and YouTube still report their performance in the moving on the basis of very different methodologies. In addition, many social media analysts do not capture the image and video presence of sponsors, which is so important for sponsorship. of the sponsors. And last but not least, Facebook's CPE is estimated in the current Ayzenberg Report values Facebook's CPE at the equivalent of € 1.63, whereas Lobeco calculates € 0.67. calculates. A deviation in the valuation of no less than 240%.
Outlook
In my opinion sports sponsorship is and remains an effective and efficient tool in the marketing mix. marketing mix. In my opinion, some rights still tend to be undervalued. undervalued. A critical examination of the quality, methodology and key figures of and key figures of media analysis can only help to provide a sound basis for planning and planning and evaluation, and ultimately to compete with other forms of advertising. create.
Customers of media analyses should definitely take the trouble to check the plausibility of reach and visibility to randomly check reach and visibility for plausibility, and to critically question critically, if hundreds of transmission snippets are assigned the same reach. range is assigned to hundreds of transmission snippets. In addition, the basis of the the basis for calculating the advertising equivalent value (AVE) and the underlying sources should be disclosed. be disclosed.
Some start-ups are already working are already working on inexpensive apps that can display the visibility of moving in real time. In case of doubt, the use of independent specialists can also help to shed light into the darkness.
And of course you can't not expect a Maybach if you've only paid for a Mini. In any case, it pays to pay attention in terms of credibility, transparency and relevance of the data.
Rights holders, marketers and associations are more than ever called upon to develop clear rules and quality requirements. also in the sense of interdisciplinary comparability. A AGF with the appropriate specialists would certainly do the sports business good and would certainly do the sports business good and enhance the credibility and relevance of media analysis. as well as the ability to plan and measure sponsorship. In addition, the methodological proliferation could be brought to a welcome end.
The author
Marcel Cordes, born 1965 in Ottersberg (near Bremen), 3 children
Vita: Sports scientist, Member of the Board of SPORT+MARKT AG, President Europe Repucom, Managing Director SetOne, General Manager of IPG Agentur FUTURES SE, Managing Partner SPORTHEADS GmbH
