Thanksgiving, Black Friday football broadcasts were a marketing win: Here’s what the numbers say

Football is an promoting magnet. Just take Super Bowl advertisements, which for the 2023 game went for as much as $7 million. And while the NFL has been known to rake in massive promoting revenue, college football has also continued to rise in popularity for each consumers and marketers. Over Thanksgiving weekend, retail ads that aired during college football showdowns on Saturday were 5% more more likely to generate engagement online in comparison with the primetime average for retail brands, based on EDO data shared with Marketing Dive.

The data from EDO, a TV outcomes company, found that, despite shifting consumer habits around holiday shopping, Thanksgiving weekend and the football frenzy tied to it remain a major marketing opportunity. Notably, the first-ever NFL Black Friday game, which aired on Amazon Prime, performed well for advertisers: Consumers who saw a retail ad during the game were 35% more likely to have interaction in comparison with the retail primetime average, per the company.

Additionally, consumers were 73% more likely to have interaction online with retail ads aired during Thanksgiving and Black Friday NFL games this yr in comparison with the retail primetime average. Viewers also engaged with these advertisements 45% greater than for ads appearing during this NFL season to this point.

“We saw a particularly strong performance on the Black Friday game, the latest game airing on Amazon. Of course, that was ranked really high on average,” said Laura Grover, senior vp and head of client solutions at EDO. “We saw that, across all advertisers, consumers were 58% more likely to have interaction with an ad on NFL on Amazon Prime, the Black Friday game, versus your typical non-live sports primetime airing.”

To higher understand promoting trends over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, EDO checked out search activity, amongst a variety of other success metrics, to find out the top performers over the period. Industries evaluated spanned the retail, automotive and wireless provider categories.

Touchdown for marketers

Walmart’s cheeky “Mean Girls” campaign for Black Friday was a success, with the retail giant seeing a 64.5-times boost in ad engagement overall in comparison to others who advertised over the holiday weekend. In total, the retailer had 11 airings during Thanksgiving and Black Friday NFL broadcasts. Behind Walmart, Dick’s Sporting Goods delivered 41.3-times more engagement than the average brand promoting that weekend. In total, the sporting goods store had eight airings total over the period.

“Two ads for Walmart were amongst the top-performing creatives in NFL games over the holiday weekend. And what I assumed was interesting about the Walmart ad, the one which performed the most strongly, [was that] it was very promotion-focused,” said Grover. 

College football also had a big weekend, with retail ads during “highly anticipated” match-ups driving 13% more online engagement than those run throughout the college football season thus far, EDO found. Some games outshined others, with the Ohio State versus Michigan game coming out on top. Consumers viewing this game were 173% more likely to have interaction with brands in comparison with the average college football Saturday games occurring Thanksgiving weekend.

“When you concentrate on college football, there’s obviously a lot more games every weekend,” said Grover. “It becomes very lineup-dependent, but they might be as impactful as an environment like the NFL.”

That insight could explain why some brands have upped their investment in the collegiate sport. For instance, alcohol giant Molson Coors doubled down on college football in August with an expanded marketing playbook, while Bud Light tapped into the hype by expanding its roster of limited-edition team cans and offering a Backyard Tour concert series targeting college towns. Other verticals have also attempted to cement their role in the sport as they strive to resonate with consumers, Grover explained.

“I believe advertisers are going to go wherever they’re going to seek out consumers engaging with ads,” said Grover. “I believe there’s a lot of massive names already invested heavily in college football — insurance brands come to mind as ones which have a really big presence, and I believe we’ll proceed to see that.”