As demand for content streaming grows, mobile apps, such as WatchESPN, search for ways to expand as well. According to Nielsen reports, users spend an average of 60 hours per week on internet connected devices consuming content across multiple screens. ESPN is making moves to take advantage of this expanding market. They have already been selling “native” advertising for years, putting ads in front of the consumer within the context of an existing program. Now, ESPN is negotiating advertising deals to bring co-branded content to your screens.
Beginning as an online YouTube series, DICK’S Sporting Goods Presents Hell Week is the first brand to test the value of this opportunity and has found success in their move to the WatchESPN app.
“We know we’re extending the reach beyond broadcast,” said Ryan Eckel, Dick’s Sporting Goods’ Vice President of Brand Marketing.
This success will no doubt lead to an expanded category of related content.
“We’ve long felt as we’ve moved WatchESPN and ESPN3 into broader distribution and more usage, there was an opportunity to take advantage of that destination and … that we could begin to offer advertisers a place to take the content they’re creating and create channels within that environment,” said Ed Erhardt, President of Customer Sales and Marketing at ESPN.
Drawing 1.7 million concurrent viewers during the United States versus Germany World Cup match, WatchESPN is poised to draw the attention and advertising dollars of many more brands. With their own in-house creative agency, ESPN CreativeWorks, they will create branded content centered on sports.
“Ultimately, we’re trying to produce something that isn’t really an ad and doesn’t feel like an ad to consumers” says Eckel.
Several brands have been in discussions with ESPN, hoping to get their hands on the opportunity to reach the nearly 75 million households in the United States who now have access to the WatchESPN app. Relevant and engaging content will be a welcomed sight for users as boring ads shoved between your favorite programs become a thing of the past.