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Disney<\/a> is sold out of ad inventory for the Final Four and championship rounds of this year\u2019s women\u2019s March Madness tournament on ESPN, according to Jacqueline Dobies, Disney Advertising\u2019s VP of revenue and yield management.<\/p>\n The tournament has 87 total advertisers, with an almost even split between new and returning brands. Google<\/a> and Home Depot<\/a> are among the new advertisers. Seven new categories joined in as well, including bottled water and home insurance.<\/p>\n \u201cThe hardest part was trying to find space for everybody, which is a great problem to have,\u201d Dobies told Marketing Brew. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen growth from existing categories, but we\u2019ve also seen a lot of new categories enter this space.\u201d<\/p>\n There are also several multiyear ESPN partners involved in the tournament this year, Dobies said, including halftime sponsor Unilever<\/a>, which is part of Disney Advertising\u2019s Level Up program, a framework it\u00a0introduced last year<\/a>\u00a0to facilitate more spending on women\u2019s sports. (Home Depot and Unilever are both advertising in the men\u2019s tournament as well, which, as of last week, was\u00a0all but sold out<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Revenue from the women\u2019s tournament has doubled from last year, according to Dobies. Disney Advertising started fielding interest as early as May, she said, but her team didn\u2019t immediately sell to every brand that came knocking.<\/p>\n If they had done that, \u201cwe would have been sold out months ago,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Instead, Disney Advertising tried to make room for brands in all stages of investment in women\u2019s sports, including longtime partners in the space, newer entrants, and brands that were simply looking to advertise against basketball in general, Dobies said.<\/p>\n To capitalize on the interest in women\u2019s college basketball, Disney Advertising is encouraging brands to spend on other women\u2019s sporting events too, Dobies said. While brands are not required to extend buys beyond the women\u2019s tournament, Dobies said, her team has been leveraging data to encourage advertisers to spread their spend across other sports like women\u2019s\u00a0volleyball<\/a>, softball, or soccer.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to try and leverage that interest to try and support women\u2019s sports across the entire portfolio,\u201d she said. \u201cWe want to try and use that momentum to help support all the other women\u2019s sports that aren\u2019t necessarily getting that same limelight right now.\u201d<\/p>\n To encourage brands to spend across Disney\u2019s portfolio as opposed to exclusively on March Madness, the team created two new audience segments for March Madness advertisers to target: fans of the men\u2019s tournament and fans of the women\u2019s tournament, VP of Programmatic Sales Matt Barnes said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re not just watching the games, but they\u2019re watching the game, the game around the game, what\u2019s going on social, checking scores,\u201d he said. \u201cThe way that they interact with our whole portfolio really changes the way that we can reach them.\u201d<\/p>\n While linear inventory is almost sold out, there\u2019s still opportunities for brands to reach fans of the women\u2019s tournament via other content they might be consuming, or via programmatic buys, which Disney\u00a0has encouraged<\/a>. Programmatic buying lets advertisers activate against \u201clightning-in-a-bottle moments,\u201d like overtimes or spikes in game viewership on streaming platforms, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn\u2019t a copy-and-paste RFP world anymore, where people are just buying the same thing, the same mix, that they bought year over year,\u201d Dobies said. \u201cWe have less and less advertisers that are coming in and buying just one platform, or one sport, or one property specifically.\u201d<\/p>\n This article initially appeared<\/a> in Marketing Brew<\/a>, a branch of Morning Brew<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nSlow your roll<\/h2>\n
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