The sponsorship industry has advanced a great deal since the time the phrase “sponsorship can’t be measured” typically went unchallenged. As all aspects of the industry have grown more sophisticated, and as the dollar value and prominence of partnerships has grown substantially, the need for accountability has become vitally important.
We are hearing questions such as: Can I measure the impact of my sponsorship activation? What is the return on my venue naming rights deal? As a property, how can I demonstrate return to the sponsors of my event? And the list goes on.
Existing approaches to measuring sponsorship ROI—which merely transfer advertising surrogates such as media equivalencies and impressions to sponsorship, or use intermediate metrics such as awareness and attitude shifts to gauge performance—miss the mark. They don’t consider either the differences the sponsorship environment requires or the inherent flaws in the way advertising is measured.
Another issue is the challenge of measuring something for which there is no standard measurement. There is simply no escaping the fact that sponsors must customize the way they evaluate to their own situation.
Truly measuring sponsorship ROI means linking expenditures directly to real investment returns.
Buyers of sports and other sponsorships must—and can—assess their partnerships based on actual outcomes rather than intermediate outputs. Instead of measuring the amount of time a sponsor’s logo is visible, sponsorship ROI must measure how, if at all, the visibility impacts fan behavior.
Another departure: measurement of sponsorship ROI must include an end-to-end solution with strategic and global capability, measuring return against a client’s specific, ranked objectives.
Truly measuring sponsorship ROI contributes to the performance of any sponsorship, enhances the legitimacy of sponsorship and its standing in the internal policy debate, and provides the justification for budget increases.
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