With the NFL kicking off next week, many marketers are asking a familiar question: does this premium inventory really pay off?
As audiences scatter across services and screens, live sports sits at the top of the advertising heap — and the NFL is its peak, one of the last places where millions still show up, engaged, all at the same time. Demand reflects that: Disney and ESPN already sold out Super Bowl LXI in August, the earliest ever, with 58 brands across 34 categories.
And our latest TV outcomes data shows the premium investment is justified. EDO’s fourth annual NFL TV Outcomes Report, just released, found that a single NFL ad last season drove as much impact as 73 ads during the average primetime broadcast and cable program — up 15% from the year before. During Super Bowl LX, one spot did the work of 1,455 ads, based on the ad-driven consumer engagement behaviors that are proven and predictive of future sales.
So the real question for media leaders isn't whether the NFL works (it does). It's whether you know how to beat the competition inside it. For that, you need the right measurement. This means fast, accurate, incremental, and scaled outcomes — inclusive of AI interactions and predictive of real sales lift — not uncorrelated surveys or lagged sales. Anything else, and you’re likely to get…uh, forgive me…sacked.
You can’t measure an NFL ad spot without a trusted baseline.
An NFL broadcast lifts almost everything. Millions of people are on their phones during ad breaks, looking up things they were going to look up anyway. If your measurement counts all of that as ad-driven, you’ve only measured the baseline strength of your brand, not the ad you just paid to air during the NFL. As an example, search interest will always be strong for a highly anticipated movie like The Odyssey — but marketers need ad-driven outcomes data to know which specific parts of their game plan are driving incremental interest and ticket sales.
Isolating what your creative actually caused, against what would have happened regardless, is the entire job of truly incremental TV outcomes measurement — and it takes serious investment in data science and vertical AI to get it right. At EDO, we’ve spent a decade-plus building the propensity models that do it. Lots of unglamorous blocking and tackling, but it's the difference between an investment-grade number that can withstand scrutiny from your boss … and one that merely serves as an ego boost.
We all know the NFL works, but how can you prove whether you won on the gridiron?
Once you’ve established a baseline, the next step is seeing how you stack up against your specific competition – among the 576 brands that advertised in the NFL last season. A scoreboard with one team on it isn’t really a scoreboard.
Plenty of companies will tell you what happened after your ad ran. Far fewer can tell you what happened after your competitor’s ad ran, because their data only covers brands that handed over first-party data. A closed loop can’t reveal where you placed, because it never sees the rest of the field.
For instance, Starbucks executives would be thrilled to know that their NFL ads were twice as effective as the average advertiser. But this story changes when you dig deeper to learn that the brand was actually 5% less effective than rival Dunkin’ in those games. These competitive outcomes stories are instrumental to understanding NFL ad performance, and our new report is filled with them.
Finally, category-level context is essential for understanding ad engagement. A volume of engagement that would lead CPG advertisers barely registers among entertainment brands. Without category-level benchmarks, you can spend a whole season distracted by vanity numbers while you’re really getting lapped by your competitors.
Bring certainty to an uncertain marketplace with broad, deep, and accurate TV outcomes measurement.
Though the NFL remains TV’s most proven ad environment, this year’s season comes during a period of great uncertainty and change for marketers. As advertisers seek to find efficiency amid fluctuating energy prices, tariff policies, and budget allocations, it’s never been more important to have measurement that accurately and reliably links your marketing activations to your business results.
EDO’s NFL TV Outcomes Report offers a glimpse of how we deliver this essential ad intelligence across the entirety of your NFL TV investment, from the industry’s most advanced sponsorship measurement solution to our sophisticated analysis of what really drives Super Bowl ad performance.
Did you know that sponsored halftime studio show segments are 198% more likely to drive consumer engagement than the average NFL sponsorship? Or that Super Bowl ads that run first in a pod generate 70% more engagement than those that air later on?
Our NFL TV Outcomes Report contains these and other insights that bring clarity, precision, and certainty to TV’s most premium ad environment. Don’t step out of the locker room without it.