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I don’t think I have really done anything on either of my blogs about the Olympics over the last weeks, and really probably should of, because as you know they were extravagant, remarkable and simply amazing.

So I guess a brief recap on how huge and fabulous and overwhelming they were is better than nothing!

With all of the numbers finally in, it is fact that the Beijing Olympic 2008 Games are the most-watched event in US TV history, ever. Historically, Olympic games hosted in North American time zones usually lead the way in viewers, so in mroe ways than one this is an amazing accomplishment of the Chinese Olympics.

Nielsen Media Research has verified that 211 million viewers tuned in to China’s Olympics on NBC Universal’s broadcast network and cable channels through 16 days of coverage. This beats the previous record-holder, the 1996 Atlanta Games, by 2 million, said an article from Trendhunter last week.

I had heard on a news broadcast a couple weeks ago that hundreds of thousands of people across the world were downloading videos of the Olympics and watching online, so it is also very important to note that in our world today of declining TV ratings and competing Internet feeds, NBC boasted 11% higher ratings (averaging 27.7 million viewers per night) than its coverage of the Athens Games in 2004.

I would be curious to see if there was an increase in viewership in a certain timezone or country.  Has anyone seen any numbers like this?

What do you think the increase in viewership resulted from?

Was it the fact that host country has the largest population in the world, so everyone in China tuned in?  Was it newsworthy athletes like Shawn Johnson and Micheal Phelps?

What are your thoughts?

Did you watch?  On TV? Online?  Both?

Source: Trendhunter 

The goal of the following Eyeball Direct Mail campaign was to actually reach out to media buyers to inform them that ESPN’s up-close camera coverage and commentary attracts the highest number of TV sports viewers in Asia.

The ad agency designed actual sports balls, a football, basketball and baseball to look like human eyeballs. Each ball had a message on the back which read: “ESPN. You can’t get closer.”

The balls were sent with a letter to the targeted media buyers detailing the up-close camera coverage and ratings, inside a box titled with the name of the ball, according to Ads of the World.

Do you think this was a successful campaign? Having a background in media planning, I have my own opinion, but what do you think?

Well ESPN was happy! This direct mail piece resulted in very positive reactions from the target and the awareness for the key statistics showed a very positive increase. Ads of the World concludes that it facilitated in creating a very favorable environment for the subsequent sales process.

What are your thoughts?

Source: Ads of the World