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Budgets going up, but the game plan needs to change
The 2010 Winter Olympics proved definitively there is a will to consume sports content on the smallest screen—more than 259,000 Olympic videos were viewed on mobile devices.
Now TSN, Sportsnet, The Score and the leagues themselves are vying for attention from this very large and hungry fan base. What sports do Canadians watch most on mobile? What kind of content do they want? Which brands are leading the way?
Marketing, Rogers Connect Market Research Group and NHL.com conducted custom research to plumb two of the most influential groups to shape mobile use in this space – sports fans and marketers – to get some answers.
In addition to more than 500 sports fans, more than 120 marketing decision makers weighed in on their satisfaction with mobile options, budget levels and how mobile products are created and maintained. What they told us revealed much about the status of the medium and hinted at some serious marketing growth waiting to happen as soon as next year.
Marketers
Survey respondents showed the swing towards mobile media investment is well underway.
Just under half of respondents (46%) said they earmarked at least part of their budget for mobile in 2012, and that jumped to 73% this year. However, a whopping 83% said money was to be set aside in 2014 for mobile marketing.
When asked what percentage of the annual marketing budget was set aside for mobile, the average response for 2012 was a measly 0.2%; in other words, a marketer with a $1-million budget spent only $2,000 on mobile in 2012. This year, that average jumped to 1.4% of the budget and that figure is expected to rise to an average of 3.6% in 2014—enough to start having an impact on an agency’s bottom line. The trend is encouraging, especially since mobile development costs are going up. But for Michael O’Farrell, it’s still not enough to show real commitment. Formerly head of the Mobile Marketing Association’s Canadian arm, O’Farrell is the founder of The Mobile Institute consultancy firm, a board member at the Mobile Experience Innovation Centre, and has been a chief researcher for government reports on mobile marketing.
“Marketers are saying they’re interested, but are only spending less than 5%? Anybody’s who’s spending a rounding error is not understanding the full potential [of mobile] to the benefit of the brand,” he says.
The survey also asked what held marketers back from serious mobile investment in the past. “Lack of budget” was the top answer (40%). While survey projections suggest that’s changing, and soon, there may be a step between bigger budgets and full-blown mobile marketing that has yet to be addressed.
In terms of consumer content of choice, sports ranks behind only news and weather.
Karen Gordon, director of online sales for the NHL, sees potential in her league’s mobile audience, but isn’t seeing matching interest from advertisers yet. “We have penetrated the typical sports advertising categories: automotive, QSR, beer, beverages, finance. In the mobile space, we’re seeing representation of all those categories, but at a much smaller scale.” The problem? Most advertisers, even large national ones, don’t have a mobile presence. Why buy mobile display when there’s no where to click to?
The NHL is starting to help advertisers develop mobile destinations to ease this problem, but Gordon expresses surprise at how many big-budget advertisers ignore the space.
Mark Silver, head of TSN Digital, likewise sees slow mobile adoption among otherwise eager sports advertisers. “The time frame around buying media has changed. Money is being placed much closer to flight dates than historically. It takes an advertiser who already has a mobile strategy who’s going to invest in mobile ads, specifically with rich media, which are higher CPM ads. You have to be in the market of building those before buying with us.”
Sports Fans
And what are Canadian sports fans doing on mobile? Watching, tracking and engaging with hockey, the most-watched sport on mobile devices—21% of respondents watched either live or recapped hockey videos on the go. They dwarfed the audiences of MLB baseball (9%), NFL football (6%), PGA golf (6%), CFL football (5%) and NBA basketball (4%).
Sports nuts listed “checking scores” as their top activity on mobile apps (31% of mobile sports activity), followed by “reading articles” (22%) and checking stats (9%). Streaming live games accounted for only 4% of activity.
In this instance, Gordon noticed that online habits of traditional web audiences foretold how the mobile audience would behave. With a preference for short, bite-sized info and noticeably smaller audiences for video and longer content pieces, these stats mirror how people use NHL.com’s main website.
“People are coming in to see the results of last night’s game, or they want to see who’s playing tonight,” she said. “Only about 35% watch highlights [on the website].”
Game time is clearly when mobile apps and websites get the most traffic—71% of participants said they check their devices during game play. “Before a game” (68%) and “immediately after a game” (65%) weren’t far behind when compared to options such as “at the office” or “during a commute.”
Silver notes similar content trends for TSN Mobile, which ranked as the most-used sports mobile app (39%) among our respondents (followed by Sportsnet at 33%, The Score at 28% and NHL Gamecentre and CBC’s Hockey Night In Canada, both at 19%).
“[Usage] ramps up over the course of the day,” Silver told Marketing. “When the puck drops, you see our traffic really begin to spike.”
One of the most important things sports fans have taught Silver is that the bar is set high in terms of his mobile products. “Fans are very passionate. They expect the best from us, and when they perceive they’re not getting it, they let us and everyone else know. There’s a significant response that we live with where we’re expected to be the best on every platform. When we don’t live up to that, there is a cost.”
