This Year's World Cup Is a Key Performance Marketing Opportunity for US Brands

Historically, marketers have built advertising campaigns around the Olympics, taking advantage of the sports drama, excitement, human interest stories and watercooler moments captivating a global audience. Advertisers reach these engaged fans through a variety of channels, including live video streaming on mobile, which has quickly gained traction with the rise of over-the-top sports streaming. Last summer, the week before the Tokyo Winter Olympic Games started, streaming app installs began increasing across the globe, our research showed. July 18 proved one of the best days, with installs up 84% compared to the 2021 average. On July 25, a few days after the games began, installs jumped by 58%. With the next Olympics two years away—the Summer Olympic Games in Paris starting on July 26, 2024—marketers have a more immediate international sporting opportunity in front of them: the FIFA World Cup in November and December of this year. It’s the biggest global sporting event, according to The Bleacher Report. Indeed, media agency Magna predicts that international sports festivities, such as the World Cup, will contribute considerably to the 9.2% projected increase in global ad revenue for the year, especially given the timing—right before the holiday shopping season commences—and the growing popularity of soccer in the U.S. Hyundai and BTS Just Dropped a 2022 World Cup Song According to research from Ampere Analysis conducted in Q4 2021, soccer (liked by a total 49% of respondents) was the fifth most liked sport among U.S. sports fans behind football (70%), basketball (61%), baseball (57%) and the Olympics (50%). With the 2026 World Cup being held in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, this year’s World Cup is a great opportunity to build interest around a sport destined to grow in the coming years, just as it did when America last hosted the World Cup in 1994. What performs best What kind of performance can marketers expect from advertising during the FIFA World Cup? To answer this question, we analyzed marketing performance for a gaming client during UEFA Euro 2020, played during June and July of 2021. Euro is a pan-European version of the World Cup to determine the best national team in Europe, and our client was seeking more app user sign-ups making a first-time deposit (FTD) with the app. The ad campaign, which started on June 7, 2021, four days before Euro 2020’s first game, was run on social media and via ad networks. With 56% of the budget, social media marketing focused on Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram. The remaining 44% of the budget was spent on ad networks via programmatic exchanges. Not surprisingly, on the days when the national teams from the main countries targeted in the campaign played, app registrations increased. The top two days for registrations and six of the top 10 days were days when these national teams played. Peak results for FTDs were similar, though it can take time after registration until a user makes a deposit. This is an important lesson for marketers advertising during the FIFA World Cup. Given the ethnic diversity in America, marketing campaigns can be tailored around many of the 32 national teams playing in the World Cup. This is particularly true for foreign brands, like German, Dutch or Danish beers or a pasta brand tying their marketing around Italy’s games. A second takeaway from the campaign was the success of the playable ads ad unit. By generating a better click-to-install rate than any of the other ad units used, playable ads enabled improving the campaign’s cost per acquisition (CPA). And despite the concerns regarding Apple’s privacy changes in 2021, particularly on Meta and Snapchat, the CPA on iOS was one-third lower than on Android. Sorting social networks Among the social networks, Snapchat was the top-performing platform, generating a CPA that was about half of what Meta achieved. When comparing cost for FTD, Snapchat’s performance improved and was about one-third the cost of Meta’s. These results highlight the importance of analyzing beyond user acquisition to compare a true business metric like FTDs. Despite Snapchat’s strong performance, the best performing channel for this campaign was ad networks. The CPA achieved by the ad networks was one-third of Snapchat’s and one-ninth of Meta’s. Though ad networks had a lower rate of conversion from registration to FTD than either Snapchat or Meta, the overall acquisition costs were so much lower for ad networks that they were still the best performing channel. With the FIFA World Cup about four months away—kickoff is on November 20, 2022—now is the time for marketers to consider capitalizing on the event. Though many marketers will be focused on their Q4 holiday shopping campaigns, the World Cup will provide new opportunities to tie brands to the biggest sporting event in the world. And with the 2026 World Cup back in North America, the 2022 World Cup is an opportunity to get in early on a marketing trend that will only grow over the next four years. Budweiser’s Inspiring World Cup 2022 Strategy Is ‘Yours to Take’