Channel 4 Sales has revealed the results of what it’s calling the most comprehensive analysis of broadcast sponsorship effectiveness, ever conducted.
Sponsorship Rocks now incorporates streaming data, creative coding, plus Barb reach and frequency data.
As broadcasters are seeing the impact of falling advertising, the study finds that broadcast sponsorship is “the optimum environment for brands to align themselves with the positive attributes of the shows that audiences actively seek out.”
“This study highlights how well sponsorships allow brands to draw on broadcasters’ unique mix of content, creativity and innovation,” explained Rupinder Downie, Sponsorship and Commercial Partnerships Leader, Channel 4 Sales.
“The debate around brand safety continues across all media platforms, therefore it is so encouraging to see research which shows broadcast sponsorship provides a reliable, transparent and effective platform for brands.”
Channel 4 commissioned independent research agency Consumer Insight to aggregate effectiveness results from almost 240 sponsorships, including 666 of waves of research that involved speaking to over 400,000 viewers over the past fifteen years.
It found:
- Sponsorship delivers impact across all key performance metrics. Compared to non-viewers of sponsorship, average percentage point uplifts are seen in awareness (+8%), consideration (+8%), brand perceptions (+7%), relevance (+5%) and trust (+6%). On average, over half of viewers will recall a sponsorship ident and almost a quarter will want to find out more about a brand having been exposed to a sponsorship.
- Long-term sponsorships amplify brands, with consideration of a sponsor that runs for over two years seeing a +20% higher boost in consideration versus a sponsorship that runs for 1-2 years.
- Frequency is a “key virtue” of sponsorship. Idents that have been seen more than 60 times see a +57% boost in prompted brand awareness, versus a campaign with an average frequency of under 60.
- Sponsorships “improve with age, rather than wear out.” When more than 20% of people agree that they are ‘getting fed up of seeing’ a sponsorship ident, this correlates to increased standout (+5%), but most notably boosts in awareness (+19%) and purchase intent (+30%) in comparison with when wear out is less than 10%.
- Sponsorship delivers impact at any size. It found that there were no significant differences on the KPI performance of sponsorships with lower reach vs higher reach. So a higher reach sponsorship will simply have the same impact but across a larger group. Channel 4 said that “makes sponsorship a valuable option for new to TV brands, or brands with smaller spends.”
- Sponsorship particularly stands out to young audiences: among all audience groups, 16-34’s returned the highest recognition cut through notoriously a difficult to engage audience.
- Content alignment is key. 81% of respondents agreed that sponsors were appropriate to the content they were sponsoring. By closely aligning a brand’s creative to a sponsorship, brand metrics can be amplified, and key attributes of a programme, can transmit onto the brand.
- Correct branding is a key driver of all other KPIs. “There is a clear correlation between being able to correctly brand a sponsorship ident and first choice consideration. ”
- Product placement, licencing and sponsorship of clips on social media amplify the performance of sponsorship. Incremental gains across key KPIs can be seen with multiple touchpoints.
