The long awaited FIFA World Cup 2022 has generated numerous headlines over the past few years – and not always through a positive lens.

With much controversy surrounding this year’s football season, it’s fair to say that many brands have been apprehensive about building their marketing strategy tied to the event. The political differences that overshadow the sporting arena – in conjunction with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis – has pushed many brands to shy away from the noise and focus their efforts on their annual holiday festivities instead. Yet, in contrast, some bold brands are taking the ‘bull by the horns’, so to speak, including the Brewdog family who recently received widespread backlash in light of its latest campaign. It’s fair to say, this year’s World Cup bonanza isn’t quite going to be the same event we have celebrated in years past.

However, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Amongst the political chatter, there are an abundance of sporting fans ready and raring for the event kick-off. In fact, it is anticipated that over one million spectators will attend the tournament’s 64 matches, and the competition will reach a global in-home television audience of over three billion people, with more than one billion fans tuning in to watch the final match (according to Publication FIFA in numbers).

So, how can brands remain protected and avoid the negativity, whilst take advantage of the amazing, positive sporting opportunity? You’ve guessed it – contextual targeting.

Target FIFA lovers by taking full advantage of advanced contextual.

Many advertisers will be in the midst of planning for the FIFA World Cup period (November 20 – December 18) – and contextual targeting will be vital for many. And for good reason. Contextual targeting not only allows an advertiser to capture the attention of consumers in the perfect mindset, but also plays a huge role in brand safety and suitability.

In fact, 4D, the advanced contextual targeting and insights platform, enables brands to broaden their scope of advertising to connect with scalable sports fanatics, while gaining the confidence that their brand is protected.

Our Key Top Tips for the FIFA Season.

It’s almost time. With the start date just around the corner, we have pulled together four vital tips to keep front and centre this season, with the aim to boost performance, deliver a true value exchange, while keeping your brand protected at all times.

• Get to know your audiences. NOW! Ensuring your ads reach the right audience – and in this case – the right sporting fans, is the number one goal behind any campaign. During any sporting event, it is so important that we understand the environments consumers are spending their time in, so that you can reach them in the best environments. Are they watching the game live? Are they reading up on the latest fixtures and results? Or, are they browsing sports wear after getting inspired to head outside and have a game themselves? By tapping into 4D Insights, you can appropriately build out targeting strategies to find consumers who are in the perfect mindset using real time data to inform real time campaign optimizations.
• Be smart and thematic with your keywords. When it comes to creating a list of keywords, there are some simple yet smart ways to boost your targeting. First, you need to ensure that your list is broad enough to achieve scale for the campaign, but refined enough that you will be delivering qualified reach. This becomes a game of quantity plus quality, to ensure you don’t miss out on any opportunities. Secondly, think thematically. Be creative with your keyword list construction, rather than simply using synonyms. Especially with a sporting event – ideas include Sports – Soccer, Sports – General, Television – Sports, and Style and Fashion – Athletic to name a few. Topic categories can help cast an appropriate net to capture individuals who are either consuming soccer content or adjacent and related topics. Using a combination of Topics and Keywords to fine tune your approach will allow the contextual technology to identify exactly what you want to target – and at scale.
• Don’t underestimate the power of context meets creative. The basic element of a campaign is to inform the audience of a specific product and/service that is relevant to the context of content an individual is consuming. There is no better place to execute the identified primary goal of a campaign than in the creative and creative messaging. Utilize irresistible call-to-action and positive customer feedback to help make your ads more believable and more compelling.
• Tap into the feel-good stories, and ignore the negativity. Many brands lose out on opportunities because they are simply too scared to target news sites. We understand why – we live in such a polarised world where negativity, politics and economic turmoil seem to cloud the headlines. This was extremely prevalent during COVID as brands missed opportunities to target positive news content. Unfortunately, this years’ World Cup seems to be following a similar trend. But, the negative headlines are just one small slice of a much bigger cake – a giant cake full of the feel-good stories, the ‘star players’, and the positive headlines that celebrate the good in the game. Rolling brand safety elements into positive targeting strategies is as simple as implementing keyword blocking to ensure that you are only targeting ads in the environments you want to be seen.

So what are you waiting for?

Explore how you can unlock contextual targeting and insights with 4D to boost performance during the FIFA 2022 World Cup, and access our FIFA World Cup Pager to the right of this article!