Are IPL advertisers getting bang for their buck?

IPL AD RATES AND ADVERTISERS HAVE SOARED. TOURNAMENT TRACKING REVEALS FANTASY SPORTS BRANDS ARE TOP OF MIND FOR VIEWERS

- Shuchi Bansal

The high-profile Indian Premier League (IPL), which started on March 22, may be top-of-mind among cricket fans, viewers and marketers, but what about brand recall for advertisers spending ₹3,000-4000 crore on the sports property? A recent brand track study shows that in the first week of the tournament, two out of three IPL viewers recalled a fantasy sports brand, making it the most memorable category, followed by tyres, with one in three viewers recalling a brand.

Sport and fitness as well as beverage brands struggled to make an impact, with much lower recall despite their presence in the tournament, the study noted. Viewers were reached on their phones via call centres and asked to recall the brands they saw on the previous day's game watched on linear TV, mobile or OTT. The day-after recall is a time-tested methodology to assess a brand's success in lodging a long-term memory based on exposure, said Ritesh Ghosal, partner, CrispInsight, a two-year-old consumer research and marketing advisory firm which did the study in collaboration with Kadence International.