When news broke in March that Group M was doubling its planned advertising spend on women’s sports, the news was greeted with joy by just about everyone in women’s sports. Around the same time, the March Madness rivalry between Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese showed the world that women’s college basketball was just as entertaining, if not more so, than men’s. This then spilled over into the WNBA, where stars from both colleges brought new attention to the league.
None of this is new to Andrea Brimmer, chief marketing officer at finance app Ally, who has long supported women’s sports with her brand’s marketing budget. Brimmer was encouraged to see the spotlight on women’s sports at the Paris Summer Olympics, which saw a variety of sports in the spotlight, from gymnasts to the U.S. women’s national soccer team to lesser-known sports like water polo and table tennis, but she believes there’s still room for growth.
Not really, to put it mildly. Brimmer cited a recent article in Front Office Sports magazine that noted that only 33 Fortune 500 companies have investments in women’s sports leagues — and none of them have investments in women’s sports leagues. In contrast, he noted, if U.S. women’s Olympic athletes were homegrown, they would rank third among the nation in medal wins.
Brimmer shared her thoughts on women’s sports, sports in general, and the ever-changing landscape of cookie elimination as a CMO who manages digital media investments internally.
This interview has been edited for space and clarity.
Having invested in marketing women’s sports for many years, what changes do you think have been made to bring women’s sports closer to parity with men’s sports?
I think the main reason for this is accessibility. The historical problem with women’s sports is that they weren’t featured in accessible media — they had bad timeslots. They were put on secondary channels in the media ecosystem. And as a result, people didn’t have the opportunity to see how great women’s sports are.
Now there’s more of a focus and emphasis on how amazing these female athletes are, how competitive these leagues are, the level of talent that exists throughout the ecosystem. And now the networks are actually able to move women’s sports to better time slots because the brands are actually supporting and putting their money into it. My favorite Caitlin Clark quote is, “Women’s sports hasn’t just gotten better, it’s always been good.”
The chicken or the egg: Did the marketing help Ally brought to the station attract attention, or did improved airtime attract funding?
There’s this vicious circle mentality that networks need funding and they need advertising support to air any kind of programming in the right time slots. Women’s sports hasn’t been in those prime timeslots historically, so they couldn’t attract advertisers because the audience mix wasn’t good. And their ability to deliver reach and frequency wasn’t optimized. In that equation, the only people who could honestly flinch at the beginning were the brands. We as brands had to ensure that the platforms would put the money in if they were going to move the programming to where it needed to be. So I think that’s when we and others said, “We have the funding and we’ll invest in them. Now it’s time for you to do your part.”
For example, I have had great relationships with Disney and ESPN, where we have been able to collaborate and discuss things. [Disney’s head of ad sales] Rita Ferro. ESPN has always been at the forefront of supporting women’s sports through ESPNW. We said, “What if we did something together that nobody had done before?” and we struck a multi-million dollar media deal. The deal guaranteed Ally a media commitment to ESPN, and ESPN guaranteed prime and premium time slots for Ally’s women’s sports programming. I think this is a great example of marketers and platforms working together. If you talk to Rita and the folks at ESPN, they tell you they got a ton of additional business because a lot of brands pointed that out to them.
With the new NBA and WNBA contracts, there’s a growing realization that sports is at a new turning point. How will marketers respond?
Media Complexity [eco]I think the system is something we all, as marketers, are wrestling with as a big problem. Media inflation is about 5% year over year. There’s a complete explosion of platforms and ways to reach or distract consumers. As marketers, we’re also wrestling with what properties we can’t access because of rights deals, how much we have to pay to unlock premium programming, etc. I think the amount of planning and brainpower that goes into figuring out how to get the most effective reach and frequency in an incredibly fragmented media ecosystem is more enormous than it’s ever been. It’s nearly impossible.
Sports is a money tree. It’s what everyone wants, which is why these leagues bring in untold amounts of money.
Switching gears a bit, Ally handles its digital media investments in-house, so do you think Google’s change of heart on cookie deprecation presents a challenge or an opportunity?
The entire industry, including us, has been preparing for the eventual death of cookies, and as a result, we’re in a good position in terms of how we organize data, how we tag data, and how we think about alternative solutions around consumer ID. To me, this is just postponing the problem.
What impact will the removal of cookies have in terms of increased costs? [or make it] It’s becoming harder to understand how to reach consumers and provide them with experiences that are real and personal. That’s what we’re trying to solve. We’re working closely with partners in the data set and with programmatic buyers like The Trade Desk to think about how to overcome unique identifiers and another challenge for the marketing and advertising industry.
They often say it’s not rocket science, and it may actually be.
