Increasing Platforms Expands ROI

Summary

•   Sports programming enjoys enormous reach, almost 230 million Americans watch sports on TV each month
• The use of Mobile devices is surging, and that platform has become the #1 source for sports information
•  ESPN conducted extensive original research on cross-platform campaign ROI. The work demonstrated that there were substantial incremental ROI as additional platforms were added to the campaign. This crucial finding aligns with the landmark How Advertising Works Today Initiative.
• Sports is ubiquitous.  Live Sports are now dominating the list of annual “Top 100 Live TV programs.”  In 2005, only 14% of those leading programs fell into the Sports genre, but 2015, data revealed that fully 93% of these Top Live programs were sports events.
Presenter Artie Bulgrin quoted Erwin Ephron, “we use different platforms because they do different things.” In response to the growing media options, ESPN has been expanded its own cross-platform research dubbed, “ESPN XP.” An example ESPN XP research was work from 24 advertisers and conducted over 35 months. The research used TV as a baseline.  As each additional platform was added (i.e. Display, VOD, Live Streaming and Radio) there was a continuous lift in two KPI’s - awareness and purchase intent. However, Bulgrin also urged the industry to move cross-platform measurement from special project to standard practice. Additional lab based findings revealed that video content on a Mobile Device is highly engaging. In fact, Ad Impact occurs in on milliseconds on Mobile.