After the 2018 FIFA World Cup The Perfect Match is back! This time we were interested in another sport, tennis. In fact, we took advantage of the Rolex Paris Masters being held at the Accor Hotels Arena at the end of 2018 with 3 world tennis legends on the bill, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Rafael Nadal and Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. Just like for the World Cup, we will therefore offer you a series of articles dealing with the digital strategy of the various sponsors but also with the organizer, namely the French Tennis Federation.
Facebook ads:
Throughout the tournament and a few days in advance, we inventoried the various advertisements that were in progress on the Rolex Paris Masters Facebook page. Indeed, this data is publicly accessible via the “News and Ads” tab, as well as the various targeted countries. The tournament started on Saturday October 27 with the qualifications, the other players started on October 29, and the best seeds including Djokovic and Federer started on October 30, and the best seeds including Djokovic and Federer started on October 30.
In France:
Ahead of the Tournament : we are seeing a drop in the number of ads until October 25 because there was previously content specific to the All Saints' Day vacation and a chance to come behind the scenes of the tournament. From the 25th to the 28th the ads were just calls to take tickets, 7 ads for 13 variations (same text but different visuals). There was in fact AB testing until November 3 with the same text associated with visuals featuring different players and more or less zoomed in or not:
Targeting optimization tests were also noted with identical content (visual and text) repeated several times on the same day.The number of advertisements increased on October 29 with the arrival of several top seeds at the training session. The tournament sponsored a video produced for this occasion and for the launch of the game “The Spoiler” consisting in indicating the impact zone of the match point during a match of the day in order to win a prize. [video width="400px” height="400px” mp4=” http://www.themetricsfactory.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/2018-10-28-17.55.58-1900235379588789144_227761796.mp4"][/video]During the tournament: The number of ads went up from the day before the best players entered the competition until the quarterfinals with a peak on 1Er November. As of October 30, the tournament sponsored its series of questions and answers videos (from Twitter) using in turn the hashtags “#RPMBox” or “#PlayersBox”. It should be noted that several advertisements highlighted the presence of Federer and Nadal before the later's retirement. With the progress of the tournament, facts of the game or extra-sports around the players were then highlighted, such as Sasha Zverev offering his shoes to the fans or a young coach who did the show alongside Marin Cilic.At the arrival of the final four, the advertisements related to the final four, the advertisements related to the ticket office were then highlighted, such as Sasha Zverev offering his shoes to the fans or a young coach who did the show alongside Marin Cilic.At the arrival of the final four, the advertisements related to the final four, the advertisements related to the ticket office were cut, leaving only content related to the players and “The Spoiler”.After the tournament: Surprisingly, until the media coverage of content stopped on November 8, it was a video of the funniest moments from Tennis TV (ATP Media's Video Platform) that was preferred to content linked to the winner Karen Kachanov. The posts about the winner remained exclusively organic.
Abroad:
Apart from France, no less than 17 different countries were targeted by the tournament.
There was an increase in the number of countries targeted on October 30 with the broadcast of content linked to Federer, RPMboxes from Isner or Herbert and “The Spoiler”, i.e. a maximum of 3 videos per country. Content linked to other players is then highlighted, as for France, again with a peak on 1.Er November with a maximum of 7 simultaneous ads in some countries (or only one throughout the tournament such as “The Spoiler” for Romania).
Not all countries were targeted during the entire tournament but it's interesting to see which ones were targeted:
In particular, these choices can be compared with data from Facebook Audience Insight (FAI) on the countries from which the people interested in the tournament come. Estimated in France between 25-30K people before the tournament, they are estimated at the end of the tournament between 35-40K, while the page saw an increase in its fans of 4.1% over the week of competition (i.e. around 3000 people).
FAI tells us that Vietnam represents 19% of interested people, i.e. the 2DN The biggest audience at the Rolex Paris Masters, it was however not targeted, just like Malaysia 3% and Hong Kong 3%. Countries linked to certain players such as Serbia or Germany were instead targeted from time to time. For others such as Bangladesh or Egypt, one may wonder about the interest/reason for these targeting.
Overall:
The mediatized post that generated the most Social Actions (reactions, comments, comments) was linked to the arrival of Nadal with 41K Social Actions.
The sponsors:
Only two sponsors highlighted the tournament via sponsored posts, Accor Hotels (Welcome Fans) and Rolex. The Accor Hotels Arena also sponsored posts (collected from 01/11).
Rolex sponsored a post targeting only France (just like the other sponsors) on October 29.
For its part, Welcome Fans highlighted a top 10 of the highlights of the tournament until October 30. Then his game “Court Toujours” set up for the event via an application aimed at gaining privileged access to the terrace behind one of the players, with food and drinks provided. [video width="1280" height="800" mp4=” http://www.themetricsfactory.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/capture-video-jeu-concours.mp4"][/video]
