With the Brazil World Cup in full swing, brands are piling into football themed activations. The top five football, or soccer, related ads viewed so far in Australia on Youtube are made up of the usual suspects, Nike, Visa and Coca-Cola. The only surprise might be Castrol, not traditionally a brand associated with football, in at number five, but it does feature Brazil ace Neymar.
None of those brands is a main FFA partner, most are not made for the Australian market, and Nike is not an official main sponsor of the World Cup. But it is muscling in on Adidas's turf and leveraging the likes of Rooney and Neymar, both of whom are on its books, and picking up instant and long tail traffic because of the hunger for sports content. The spike in traffic at the 2014 World Cup will be huge, reckons Olly Grundy, solutions lead at Google and Youtube spokesman.
Speaking from London he said that the UK's appetite for soccer was obviously larger, but that Google saw traffic movement across the board. "We see a big spike in Google search around the world cup in Australia."
"SBS is getting great viewing figures," he notes, as is Youtube.
"The numbers already show Australians are engaging. 2010 was flying compared to 2006 [and is expected to jump again four years on] which shows that people will watch global videos from brands and they are engaging with Australians around soccer in general."
That adds more weight to the line that Google has been pushing for some time around the platform for advertisers.
"We are not talking about how to videos or anything. Traditional sponsorship was 'here's our logo' on the stadium. Now brands like visa are using the opportunity to show what they can give back, using the opportunity to showcase what they can do beyond awareness of [its] association [with the event]."
Nike "can use the world cup as a tent pole... but also has rights with sports stars, so when the next tournament comes around, the fans are there and, if the content is great, will engage."
Grundy reckons the popularity of football makes the World Cup like the "the Super Bowl for advertisers but on a global scale".
But there are rights issues around the actual footage itself.
Grundy didn't want to comment on the issue other than Google takes it "very seriously". While Google is one of the world's biggest companies, he also declined to comment, but from a personal perspective, that turning broadcaster with a global rights deal was unlikely given the cost and the logistics involved across 150 countries.
He indicated, since users were made to sign in on Youtube if they wanted to comment that "comments were still coming in at the same kind of rate," and that the credibility of brand sentiment "seems to have evolved" as a result.
See the top Australian ads around football below.
1. Nike Football
2. Nike Australia
3. Visa
4. Coca Cola
5. Castrol Football
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