Sponsorship Analytics: August

Virtually every sponsor has some aspect of online activation in their sponsorships these days. Of course, there are a ton of different variables beyond sponsorship that impact web traffic, of which we recognize. Nonetheless, we thought it would be fun to take a look at some of the hot properties and sponsors for the month of August and see how sponsorship may have impacted (or not impacted) their traffic for the month. For the purposes of this inexact science, we use compete.com.

On NFL's opening day, we start with the Philadelphia Eagles. whose site got so much traffic last month as a result of Michael Vick that it actually broke the sponsor section of their site (?) for a brief time. All is well now, especially with a nice 2x on visits - many of which likely to the sponsor page. As for Lincoln Financial, the Eagles top sponsor, they received a 17% bump in traffic during the month. Traffic in protest?

How did title sponsors of golf fare? Safeway (LPGA title), Bridgestone (PGA), Wyndham (PGA) and Barclays (PGA) each posted some impressive year over year results for the month of August.

Next we checked back in on a Monster Energy promotion launched in August whereby the company is sponsoring a local band to perform at CrueFest in each of the local markets the music tour visits. Submissions and voting can be made at the cruefest site, which grew traffic at a 34% clip from July to August.

Did Usain Bolt fans rush to check out the YAAM's online after seeing viral ads and watching Bolt break numerous records at the World Championships in Berlin? Visits grew by nearly 20% during the month.

Finally, we made our way back to Queens to check in on a couple rookie U.S. Open sponsors. It's probably more likely that Oikos got a direct bump out of the sponsorship, but both brands had significant increases in traffic during the month of August.

Take what you will from this, but unlike some other aspects of sponsorship, online metrics are pretty quantifiable if you can extract the unrelated independent variables. Not an easy thing to do, but fun trying.