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The Olympics and Advertising - Loser takes all
奥运会和广告——“败”者为王
Why a televison-ratings flop is still marketing gold
为什么收视率下降的电视仍然是市场营销的黄金
Among the records broken at the Tokyo Olympics, one went uncelebrated: the games were the least-watched in decades. In America just 15.5m people tuned in each night, the fewest since NBCUniversal, now part of Comcast’s cable empire, began covering the event in 1988. Viewership was 42% lower than at the Rio games in 2016. Broadcasters in Europe recorded similar falls. Brands that had paid to advertise alongside the jamboree complained. NBC scrambled to offer them free spots to make up for the ratings shortfall. Yet the Olympics illustrated a puzzle of advertising. Even as audiences desert TV, brands are paying as much as ever for commercials.
在东京奥运会上打破的记录中，有一项没有得到庆祝：这是几十年来观看人数最少的一届奥运会。在美国，每晚只有1550万人收看，这是自1988年NBC环球（现为康卡斯特有线电视帝国的一部分）开始报道这一赛事以来收看人数最少的一次。与2016年里约奥运会相比，收视率下降了42%。欧洲的广播公司也出现了类似的下降。付费在赛事过程中做广告的品牌纷纷抱怨。NBC赶忙为他们提供免费节目，以弥补收视不足。然而，奥运会显示出广告业的一个谜。即使观众不再看电视，各大品牌还是一如既往地为费用高昂的广告买单。
Tokyo was an uneven playing field. Many events took place while Americans and Europeans were asleep. Stars such as Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka left some events early. Covid-19 meant no spectators, and face-masks all round. But the collapse in viewership wasn’t a one-off. Tokyo’s opening ceremony was watched by 36% fewer Americans on the day than watched Rio get under way in 2016. Rio’s audience in turn was 35% lower than London’s in 2012.
东京是一个不公平的竞技场。许多赛事是在美国人和欧洲人睡觉的时间进行的。西蒙·拜尔斯和大阪直美等明星提前退出了一些赛事。新冠肺炎意味着没有现场观众，到处都得戴口罩。但收视的锐减并不是一次性的。当天观看东京奥运会开幕式的美国人比2016年观看里约奥运会开幕式的美国人少了36%。里约的观众数量也比2012年的伦敦少了35%。
While viewers have disappeared, advertisers have stuck around. NBC sold more than $1.2bn in ads for Tokyo, about the same as in Rio. Even after dishing out the compensatory ads, it expects to make a profit on the $1bn or so it paid for the rights to televise the games. It has also managed, in the words of Jeff Shell, its boss, to use them “as a firehose to promote everything else that we’re doing at the company” — above all its streaming service, Peacock, which zoomed up the app-store charts.
虽然观众消失了，但广告商却一直在这里。NBC在东京的广告销售额超过12亿美元，与里约大致相当。即使投放了补偿性广告，该公司预计仍将从为获得奥运会转播权支付的约10亿美元中盈利。用其老板杰夫·谢尔的话来说，它还成功地将其作为“一根消防水带来推广我们公司正在做的所有其它事情”——尤其是它的流媒体服务“孔雀”，它在应用商店排行榜上的排名大幅上升。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
