Business partnerships and sponsorships on a global scale are placed at a $500 – $600 billion valuation. In the U.S, it is expected to exceed $21 billion in 2015, with more than 70% of it spent on sports-related ventures.
These are huge numbers; but where is the proof that this money is well spent? How do companies measure the impact of these sponsorships or is it all just Russian roulette?
As of July, Wasserman Media Group has established a new partnership with Nervve, a provider of image search technology in order to offer brands and new companies a stronger, and more cost-efficient way to measure the exposure of logos, brand images, and other related advertising. This partnership will seek to deliver full-service measurement and analytics to clients that can be shared via customized visually intuitive dashboards and storylines. In the end, companies will be able to understand the impact and effectiveness of each sponsorship, and make smart business decisions to help move in the right direction.
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“Measurement and insight are the two core components in everything we do,” explains Zack Sugarman, Vice President of Digital Media at Wasserman. “Whether that’s coming up with an activation strategy, whether that’s coming up with a sports partnership strategy (which brands do we choose from) it’s all rooted in numbers. The fact is that we now have a partner in Nervve that can deliver an amazing amount of data, in a quicker way. Right now we’re focused with Nervve on really evaluating fluctuations in sponsorships; television broadcast, and helping new brands on making the best decisions.”
Nervve’s technology thrives in utilizing massive amounts of video and imagery in order to find specific objects of interest in a matter of seconds. The effectiveness of Nervve’s search engine can be credited to 3 criteria: Scalability, Consistency and Analysis:
- Scalability
Large-scale searches for massive quantities of content in the form of brands, logos and objects instead of words and “hashtags”
- Consistency
Accurate, precise brand measurement enables sponsorship optimization
- Analysis
Provide context to analytics (object’s visibility, positioning in frame, duration of time etc) and generate actionable insights to identify new revenue opportunities.
“Nervve is a technology company that has been around for a couple of years” explains Joe Cecin, President and COO of Nervve Technologies. It really started taking off last year what we do is we do is high-speed visual search. We don’t use keywords, or metadata or tags; instead, we actually search via pixel data to find objects of interest. We showed Wasserman our product this year, and the capability it has to measure brands exposure in broadcast television. In July, we signed the partnership agreement with Wasserman to give them more rapid turnaround to their measurement projects as well as a more objective and accurate tool for exposure measurement.
With Nervve’s search engine the ability to properly value sponsorships and exposure for brands could lead to an exceptionally efficient market place.
“As of now, a lot of search engines that companies use are very expensive and time-consuming” remarks Cecin. “Imagine if you have a 4 day tournament and 3 days of video-editing. It’s going to take a long time to analyze such data, not to mention the current method of operation is largely manual. By bringing in a new measurement technology to the table, data and sponsorships you increase accuracy, you increase consistency, you reduce turnarounds and hopefully reduce cost over time so that more can actually take place. I believe this market will ultimately grow because you have an effective, reliable, fast tool to use and that more money will be spent on measurements of effectiveness in regards to brands”.
Nervve’s current technology is a key reminder of how fast paced the world of technology is moving today. In just the past few years, new marketing tactics and ideas such as “on-demand” video or online subscriptions have forever changed the way people consume content. Sports is no different. With Nervve being a front-runner for fast paced search technology, it won’t be long before data and real time analytics play an even bigger role in the business of sports.
“We live in the social digital world” said Sugarman. “We want the entire experience to be seamless as possible and immersive as possible. All of the memories these days are captured in tech and online. It really is about having a frictionless distribution method where I can show whatever I want, whenever I want to whomever I want. People want personalized experiences, and we have to be ready for that”.