Throughout the ESPN college football season that just concluded with Georgia defeating TCU 65-7 in the College Football Playoff (CFP) National Championship Presented by AT&T, Disney Advertising continued to collaborate with EDO, a data and analytics company that measures predictive outcomes for Convergent TV, to measure consumer engagement with ads aired across ESPN Networks.
“This historic college football season was one for the books with exciting matchups from the very first kickoff weekend through the National Championship, and data proves that Disney advertisers saw impactful results when integrated into our studio and live programming,” said Danielle Brown, SVP, Disney Advertising Data Enablement & Category Strategy. “There is no doubt that college football on ESPN networks is one of the most engaging advertising environments and drives performance for brands.”
The top-performing advertising categories during the Championship game on January 9 included restaurants, entertainment and recreation, and automotive. During the national broadcast, Mercedes-Benz USA executed a mixed reality activation, leveraging cutting-edge technology both on-air and on-site. The unique and innovative advertisement outperformed the median 2023 CFP National Championship ad by over five times. This same activation performed extremely well during the CFP Semifinals. TV viewers who watched the Mercedes-Benz mixed reality integration during the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl were 22 percent more likely to search for Mercedes-Benz than if they saw the brand's ads on primetime broadcast and cable programming.
The 2022-23 CFP Semifinals on ESPN outperformed the same 2021-22 programming by almost 20 percent. Only second to the CFP National Championship, EDO data shows that Semifinal games are the most impactful for advertisers among College Football programming. Advertisers would need about 73 spots across the rest of primetime broadcast and cable to generate as much engagement as one ad during this year’s college football semifinals programming on ESPN.
Advertising during New Year’s Six (NY6) bowl games on ESPN performed eight percent better in 2022-23 than the 2021-22 season; meaning viewers were eight percent more likely to search for the brands advertised during NY6 bowl games this year than last.
The 2022 CFP Semifinals delivered over 21 million viewers, making it the best in five years and the most-watched non-New Year’s Day semifinals of the CFP era. Both the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl and the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl ranked among the top five non-NFL telecasts since the start of 2022.
Media Contacts:
Bukola Oyalabu | Bukola.Oyalabu@Disney.com
Kristen Smith | Kristen.T.Smith@Disney.com