The Sochi Winter Olympics created global interest in sports that do not usually get such high scale coverage. They also presented an opportunity for advertisers to capitalize on raising awareness of their brands because they could be certain of a high audience exposure via a relatively small selection of channels. 31.7 million US TV viewers watched the opening ceremony at Sochi giving some indication of the scale of audience.
RealityMine used an eDiary, USA TouchPoints, method of data collection to see what a panel of people in the USA did during the Winter Olympics. We asked respondents every half hour what they were doing, who they were with, how they were feeling and a series of media specific questions. The results reveal some interesting insights for brand advertisers.
Sunday 9 February was the day with the highest attested viewership of sports events during the Sochi Winter Olympics with 19% of sports viewing taking on this day. Snowboarding, ski jumping and ice hockey were all broadcast on this day.
Saturday 15 February was the day when people said they were most excited when watching sports events (27%). This was the finals day for the men’s ski jump, skeleton and 1500m speed skating, indicating that medal days are therefore generally more exciting than other viewing days.
If we look at the pattern of viewership for sports events, we can start to see the time and day of the week when people were most receptive to advertising via the Winter Olympics. The bluer the rectangle in the below table, the more sports viewing there was at that time. We can see that Sunday evenings between 7pm and 9pm are the peak times for watching the Winter Olympics. This could be classed as family TV time.
