Woolworths campaign tops Rio Games advertising

Woolworths was the biggest advertiser during Channel Seven’s Olympic coverage, followed by McDonalds, Telstra, Toyota, Harvey Norman and Optus.

Woolworths was the biggest advertiser during Channel Seven’s Olympic coverage, followed by McDonalds, Telstra, Toyota, Harvey Norman and Optus, according to research company Ebiquity.

The supermarket giant used the Rio Games to promote its “How do you grow champion?” campaign, taking out just under 6500 spots in total across Seven’s three free-to-air channels during the seventeen days of the Olympics.

It was followed by McDonalds, which is a global sponsor of the Olympics. The fast-food giant took out almost 5400 spots during the Games with its “Aussie Legends” campaign.

Telstra was third with its “Magic of Technology” campaign that involved 4560 spots. Telstra’s “Go to Rio” campaign promoting Seven’s “Olympics on Seven” app, which was available to its mobile customers prompted the Australian Olympic Committee to take the company to the Federal Court.

The AOC argued the ads implied Telstra was a sponsor of the Australian Olympic team for the Rio Games — when it bowed out of Olympic sponsorship last year and was replaced by Optus.

The court allowed Telstra to continue with the ads but the company included a disclosure in the ads that it was not an official Olympic sponsor.

The Ebiquity research shows that Toyota was the fourth largest advertiser with almost 4500 spots followed by Harvey Norman’s 4300 spots and Optus with 3700 spots.

Other major advertisers were Swisse (2880 spots), Qantas (2432 spots), Samsung (1989 spots) and the industry super fund movement (1367 spots). “The summer Olympics in Rio are arguably the biggest event on television with the opportunity to reach more Australians, more often than any other event,” Ebiquity said.

“Many of the big brand advertisers jumped on board this advertising juggernaut in order to reach the masses,” Ebiquity said.

“Most of us could comfortably name all the advertisers across the 17-day period of the Games.”