Pre-Bracket Buzz: How Advertisers Can Score Before March Madness
As LG Ad Solutions has explored before, March is a crazy time to be a sports fan. But what about those basketball fans who just can’t wait for the Big Dance? The fans who have been tinkering with brackets and already have their dancing shoes on?
Trick question: “How many teams are in the Big 10?” Answer at the end!
The Importance of Conference Tournaments
Conference tournaments are regionalized, offering advertisers the opportunity to reach fans with localized messaging and align their brands with solids, bubbles, and longshot teams. The solid teams are shoo-ins for March Madness and can use the Conference tournament to reinforce their resume. The bubble teams can pick up quality wins to convince the selection committee they deserve to be a part of the national tournament. And finally for the longshots, winning the conference tournament is the only way to join the Big Dance. For example, last year NC State won the ACC tournament and made a Cinderella run all the way to the Final Four.
LG Ad Solutions used our Automatic Content Recognition technology to see how tournaments performed last year and what strategies advertisers should consider to best reach these audiences.
Major Conference Tournament Viewership Comparisons
Last year, the Big 10 led the pack for the highest viewership with nearly 1 in 10 LG TVs tuning-in to the tournament. For advertisers looking to purely maximize their reach, both the Big 10 and ACC offer great opportunities to connect with lots of college basketball fans. That being said, reach isn’t the only factor that advertisers should consider. As we will see below, selecting a specific conference can give advertisers access to targeted audiences while allowing regional focus.
Respecting Geographic Differences
Regional and national brands can further enhance their connection with audiences through showcasing regional preferences and local messaging. As a rule of thumb, Conference Tournament viewership tends to be concentrated within the geographic confines of the conference. This is easiest to see in the Big 10 where Nebraska and Purdue made it to the semi-finals. And within the SEC, we saw strong performances from basketball states like Kentucky and Tennessee despite neither team making the semi-finals as well as within Alabama due to the performance of eventual winner, Auburn. Similarly, the ACC championship featured an exciting all-North Carolina matchup between NC State and UNC.
Pre-Bracket Strategies
So how can advertisers best reach Conference Tournament fans before March Madness?
- Improve ROI with Geotargeting: Geotargeting allows advertisers to cater to fans’ regional preferences while avoiding the costs associated with running national campaigns. Use LG Ad Solutions’ device-level targeting to add geographic precision to your advertising strategy.
- Immediate Impact with the Home Screen: With Conference Tournaments, seeding often comes down to the final regular season game (sometimes tie-breakers even kick in!). LG Ad Solutions’ CTV Native Home Screen ads provide an opportunity to immediately connect with fans from tipoff to the final buzzer, regardless of who is playing.
- Capitalize on Enhanced Ads: 85% of March Madness fans are interested in seeing score and standing updates on their TV Home Screen, which is an option through LG Ad Solutions’ Dynamic Creative Optimization capabilities.
- Track Ad Exposures: Using LG Ad Solutions’ Automatic Content Recognition, advertisers can understand which TVs have seen your and your competitors’ ads. This allows advertisers to manage frequency among audiences who have already seen their ads, conquest against competitors, and target the unexposed!
Is your advertising strategy ready for March Madness? Consider checking out our newest sports-focused report Stadium to Screen or our previous Mastering the (March) Madness. Or contact us for more information!
* Answer: There are currently 18 teams in the Big 10. The Big 10 hasn’t only had 10 teams in it since 1990.
