NBC’s Olympic coverage this year has been attacked from all angles. From poor coverage to excessive ads, NBC’s shortcomings are an excellent case for anyone that relies on advertising to drive business.
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As the 2016 Rio Olympic Games draw to a close, many will be looking back on successes, failures, and improvements to be made. The perennial U.S. broadcast company for the Games, NBC, has more to review than any athlete or team – their average ratings for Olympic coverage were well below those in London in 2012 and even Beijing in 2008. Meanwhile, viewers are flocking to other options, including streaming international coverage using VPNs.
For NBC, the Games in Rio represented the culmination of antiquated marketing strategies, a lack of consumer focus, and complete refusal to adjust to a streaming-focused world. Because the Olympics are such a high-profile event, NBC’s recent missteps are a perfect case study for anyone looking to reach their audience in the most relevant and respectful way possible.
Why NBC Came Up Short
After paying over $1 billion to ensure broadcast rights to the Games in the U.S., NBC was under pressure to offset the costs with advertising – something they accomplished with $1.2 billion in ad sales. Though this all happened before the Games aired, NBC Sports Group chairman Mark Lazarus wasted no time in preemptively proclaiming, “This will be the most economically successful Games in history.”
Too bad no one told the viewers.
Before the Games, NBC repeatedly patted itself on the back, insisting their coverage of this year’s Olympics was the most extensive ever and to be fair, it probably was. Unfortunately, NBC still had to air $1.2 billion of ads, which, as it turns out is a lot of ads. The network’s standard primetime schedule has been slammed repeatedly for being drawn out, boring, and featuring an unwatchable amount of commercials. This has led to a sharp decline in viewership – Rio’s 15.4 household Nielsen rating is a far cry from the high teens NBC promised advertisers.
But there’s still the NBC app for streaming, right? In theory, NBC’s online streaming app would air all events live, giving Olympic-hungry viewers all the competition they could handle. In practice, the app is plagued by crashes and events are often interrupted by ads longer than the event itself; these issues have earned the app scorn and over 20,000 1-star App Store reviews.
What’s worse, NBC execs have doubled down on their strategies, proudly flaunting their complete lack of consumer awareness as proof of success. “Those aren’t people who are watching gymnastics every week or are fully knowledgeable in the sport” Lazarus said of typical viewers. “Part of our job is to further inform them and make the sport bigger.”
And this is the crux of the entire problem – NBC is convinced they know what is best for their audience, treating them like dumb, ad-obsessed consumers still trapped in the 20th century.
What Businesses Can Learn
While most businesses can’t relate to a gigantic media conglomerate, NBC’s foibles still present ample learning opportunity for anyone with a targeted audience.
Understand and Respect Your Audience – this is likely the biggest takeaway from this year’s Olympic Games. Though NBC was confident they understood their audience, they lost viewers in a slew of demographics, especially streaming-minded millennials. Survey and test your target audience to ensure you’re approaching them with ads relevant to their interests. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter allow you to test the effectiveness of ads before launching a full campaign. Test, test, test – you can never understand your audience too well.
Target, Don’t Spam – this principle can be applied to the largest corporations down to the smallest mom and pop store. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to reach targeted audiences on TV,” said Paul McHardy, Marketing Manager with Dish2U, “especially with so many people recording shows and skipping the ads later.” Had NBC reached its viewership goals, their ads would still have been broadcast to a very general audience. If, instead of focusing on selling TV ads, NBC had emphasized advertising in their streaming app, they would have had access to much more audience data and could have provided relevant, targeted commercials. Online advertising is much easier to target, meaning you get more value out of your ad spend because your ads actually reach interested parties. It’s the difference between advertising on a billboard and advertising in a special interest magazine.
Stabilize and Stress Test – as anyone who plays Pokémon Go can tell you, a great app is only great if it actually works. The repeated issues that users had with NBC’s streaming app made it wholly ineffective as an advertising tool, even if it were the best opportunity for the network to reach consumers. Whether you’re building an app or a simple website for your business, make sure it can works as intended and can handle traffic before launch. Online consumers are finicky and apt to find an alternative well before you have time to fix major issues.
Business owners can learn from NBC’s example by researching their audience and delivering relevant advertisements. Just remember – it’s much easier to lose a customer than it is to earn a new one.
Photo: Flickr/Brandon O’Conner