World Cup ads, connected TV, sustainable purchases: 5 interesting stats to start your week

Women’s World Cup ads outperform men’s

Ads celebrating the ongoing Women’s World Cup are outperforming those aired for the men’s tournament in Qatar last year, according to System1’s Test Your Ad platform.

System1’s platform predicts the short- and long-term commercial impact of ads by assessing the emotional responses of audiences. It assigns each ad a Star Rating, from 1 to 5.9 stars, based on their ability to drive market share growth.

Just one ad celebrating the men’s World Cup late last year scored in the four-star range, this was the highest any ad for that tournament scored. By comparison, the ongoing women’s tournament has so far generated three four-star ads.

The highest-scoring ad, according to System1’s platform, is ITV’s ‘The Pride has Arrived’, which scores 4.4 stars. The next highest comes from Brazilian telecoms company Claro with a score of 4.3 stars, while an ad from Nike, shown in Brazil, rounds out the top three, scoring 4.1 stars.

Recent research from System1 and Fuse, a sport and entertainment agency powered by Omnicom Media Group, found that sports sponsorship initiatives have the power to perform as well as the world’s best advertising and often achieve even greater effectiveness among sports fans. This was termed “the sports dividend”.

The sports dividend effect is shown in the impact of an ad from telecoms provider Orange, which spotlights gender equality in sport, says System1. While the ad scored 3.1 stars among the general public, it scores 4.7 stars for its long-term brand-building potential among sports fans.

Source: System1

Global CTV ad market forecast to reach £20bn in 2023

Advertisers are expected to spend over £20bn on connected TV (CTV) in 2023, up 13.2% versus 2022.

With younger generations turning away from traditional TV and towards streaming, CTV is expected to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 10.4% over the next five years. However, CTV is mainly taking share from traditional linear advertising spend, rather than from other channels like social media, according to Warc.

While CTV’s growth may look impressive, it pales in comparison to that of retail media. It took retail media 10 years to grow tenfold, while CTV only grew threefold in the same period.

According to Warc, CTV’s proportion of the ad spend market is dwarfed by other internet players. The global pureplay internet ad market is worth £411bn, while Meta alone is expected to earn almost £91bn in ad revenue in 2023.

YouTube’s ad revenue alone is forecast to exceed the entire CTV ecosystem’s revenue by 17.4% in 2023. In 2024, that gap is expected to narrow to 13.2%.

There are still limitations to the CTV ad market, such as global audiences not owning TVs enabled to access streaming. Less than half (45.8%) of people globally have access to a smart TV, GWI figures suggest.

Source: Warc

Cost and trust preventing consumers from buying sustainable home products

Most consumers would like to buy more sustainable products and materials for their homes, however, this desire is held back by the perceived cost and questions over whether green claims from brands can be trusted.

Over half (52%) of survey respondents say they would like to buy products or materials for their home that are sustainable but believe these are more expensive. A similar proportion (50%) are held back over questions on whether they can trust companies’ claims around the sustainability of products.

There is confusion about how to check the sustainability of products, with around one quarter of consumers saying they don’t know where to verify sustainability claims around products or materials for their home. One in four (23%) also say they do not understand the language used around environmental claims for these products.

Consumers are particularly likely to want to check the sustainability credentials of their home appliances, with almost two in three stating they’d check before they buy an appliance. Over half (54%) say they would check for building materials, with 53% saying they would check for home furnishings.

Source: Unhooked Communications

Retail volume sales declined in July amid poor weather

Wet weather dampened UK retail sales last month, with the impact of inflation masking a decline in volumes although total sales increased.

Total retail sales grew 1.5% in July according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC). However, with annual shop price inflation last month remaining extremely high, at 7.6%, this represents a volume decrease.

The sales increase is also below the three-month average of 3.5% and 12-month average of 3.9%.

Non-food sales decreased by 0.5% on a total basis, despite higher prices driven by inflation.

“The slowing pace of retail price inflation fed through into slower sales this July. Spend was further depressed by the damp weather, which did no favours to sales of clothing, and other seasonal goods,” says BRC chief executive Helen Dickinson.

The proportion of retail sales bought online also decreased in the period. The proportion of non-food items bought online (penetration rate) decreased to 34.7% in July from 35.3% in July 2022. This represented a steeper decrease (6.9%), versus the same period a year ago (3.9%)

Source: British Retail Consortium

Gambling is the most popular sub-category of shirt sponsorships in football

Gambling represents 15.4% of front-of-shirt sponsorships in professional football. Classified as part of the consumer services category, it is the most popular sub-sector of front-of-shirt sponsors in the sport, and holds the highest share of any sub-sector across football, rugby and cricket. By comparison, gambling brands make up 4.9% of shirt sponsors in cricket and just 0.03% in rugby.

From the end of the 2025/26 season Premier League football teams will no longer be allowed gambling brands as front-of-shirt sponsors, after the teams agreed to measures in April.

In rugby, home and garden retail is the most popular sub-sector, making up 10.9% of sponsors. The manufacturing/engineering sub-sector is the most popular in cricket, at 9.8%.

Overall, across all sports, the industrial sector, which includes manufacturing and engineering, is now the most popular category of front-of-shirt sponsorship. It accounts for 14.5% of sponsorships across the three sports. It overtook consumer services as the most popular overall category.

In women’s sport specifically, travel and tourism is the most popular category, accounting for 15.8% of sponsorship deals.

Source: Caytoo