How to Effectively Measure the ROI of Sponsorships

This guide will provide practical tips for optimizing sponsorship spend and measuring the true impact of these campaigns. 

We've broken this guide down into three sections: the research phase of a sponsorship, the measurement phase, and the time frame once the sponsorship period has ended. We’ll use examples from a variety of industries and brands. 

Let’s get started. 

Phase 1: Research

To kick off research around a sponsorship opportunity, start with the goals you want to accomplish and the questions that need answering to find out if they could viably be achieved. 

Want to get your brand name in front of a new audience? Then ask questions around how your target audience and the audience of a celebrity or event match up. Want to target existing customers? Then get to know the spaces where they like to hang out and who they’re influenced by.

Let’s dive into this further. 

Finding the right fit for your target audience

First, you’ll need to consider which sponsorship is appropriate to reach your target audience. Begin by analyzing how your audience matches up with your potential sponsorship’s audience. Does the audience of an event, influencer, or celebrity you’d like to work with overlap with the audience you want to target with your product or campaign? 

A market research tool can help you identify this audience crossover. For example, you can create unique audience panels and gain rapid insights on what – and who – your target audience is talking about with Brandwatch. 

Finding the right event

With social media, traditional sponsorship locations aren’t necessarily the most effective. For example, banners at a baseball game that don’t get much TV airtime can become a lot more valuable if a visiting celebrity posts an Instagram selfie with them in the background.

Influencers can drive new and interesting angles to all kinds of events. A post about a baseball game, backstage antics at a fashion show, or even a well-timed fall in front of your brand's banner on a red carpet could all get new eyes on your logo or message. 

It’s important to triangulate your sources when it comes to assessing potential event sponsorship opportunities. For example, TV viewership might show that award shows are bad sponsorship investments. Yet, by solely looking at TV ratings, you’re missing the full picture. By examining social mentions and the views gained from streaming these events – both during and after the live show – you might find a golden opportunity for your brand. The 2024 Oscars ceremony, for example, saw over 1.9 million online mentions, an increase of 18% compared to the event in 2023. 

Blending data sets can achieve much more holistic and nuanced answers to your research questions around sponsorships.

Finding the right person

Like we’ve already said, finding a person who is a good fit for your target audience when considering your sponsorship options is vital. 

You can use tools like Influence to search for potential influencers to partner with and analyze a list of appropriate ambassadors which fit with your criteria.

By assessing whether the followers of your chosen influencer or celebrity align with your target market, you can guarantee your brand will be shown to a receptive audience. 

When choosing a person to sponsor, it’s vital to identify if your values align to help you maintain authenticity and build brand trust. Aligning your values also helps your partnership to be more cohesive and potentially long-running, as both parties will be working towards similar goals. 

A strict vetting procedure should be in place for any brand ambassadors you employ, and scanning news coverage and historical social data can help you to identify red flags before it’s too late. Are they a vocal advocate of a competitor? Do they use language your audience might find offensive? Have they been involved in a scandal relating to your industry? 

The benefits of reactive marketing in sponsorships

Today’s social media landscape lends itself to a new form of sponsorships in the form of reactive marketing. Anything has the ability to go viral, and there's always a chance that your brand might accidentally be involved in the whirlwind of a trending TikTok video, Reddit thread, or Instagram post.

For example, your restaurant could be the home of a trending video, or someone could share a funny image which has your product in the background. And your brand can benefit from sponsoring these people or events after-the-fact.

A good example is Ocean Spray, who saw success by offering a sponsorship on the back of a viral video. The video – of someone riding a skateboard and drinking Ocean Spray – went viral a few years ago. And the brand hopped on the virality bandwagon swiftly, gifting the TikToker a truck and a trunk load of Ocean Spray.

The sponsorship, although small, received plenty of engagement. And fans were happy to see Ocean Spray’s response to the viral video.

Keeping these tips in mind, you’ll be able to identify which sponsorship opportunities are appropriate for your brand – planned or unplanned. And now you’ve nailed your sponsorship choice, let's explore how to effectively monitor it when it’s up and running.

Phase 2: During the sponsorship

Once a sponsorship deal is in place and running you can begin measuring, and a proactive approach is best. Ensure that you have the right set up in place to capture all possible conversations and mentions of your sponsorship and keep an eye on the live buzz to identify opportunities to boost awareness. 

Tracking buzz

It can be easy to track the amount of conversation around your brand that results from a sponsorship, provided you're monitoring all the right words and phrases. 

Here's an example. We measured thousands of social media mentions during the Super Bowl in 2024. We used Brandwatch Consumer Research to track the most popular ads, celebrities, and reactions to the famed sporting event. Two brands stole the show among online conversations during the event: Temu and Verizon. 

Online marketplace Temu’s 30-second ad garnered over a third of online mentions about brands during the Super Bowl. And Verizon achieved a close second with their ad that featured superstar Beyoncé. Yet, many of these mentions weren’t direct @ mentions from fans – instead, people mentioned the ads indirectly. 

It’s also worth considering mentions which don’t use your brand name in the text at all – but instead through images. Tools like Image Insights can help you identify your logo in online mentions that include pictures. For example, if you sponsor a soccer team’s jerseys, this will pick up posts from fans sharing images of players – regardless of if your brand is explicitly mentioned in the text.

Without a holistic dashboard set up that accounts for both direct @ mentions, indirect brand mentions, and image-related mentions of your brand, there’s potential for mentions to be missed – which might undervalue your investment.

Of course, pooling data sources together is the best way to maximize the tracking of your sponsorship ROI.

Bringing data sources together

Ideally, you’ll also want to pick up on mentions on TV, in newspapers, and other traditional media. 

Coupling traditional and social media data can give you a far more complete picture of the performance of your sponsorship, as well as highlighting areas where you might want to invest more to improve exposure. Perhaps journalists are writing about your brand, but is it being shared in publications relevant to your audience? 

Finding a sweet spot where both journalists and social media users care about your campaign is the ideal place to be. 

A live view 

A high-profile sponsorship that runs over a short period can be the perfect opportunity for your team to excel. Gathering a team of marketers who are equipped to be reactive can help you to make the most of the opportunities that spring up. 

A great example is the way that Jaguar behave in the following video. As their Super Bowl ad airs, they’re able to react to the incoming data around conversation and page views and respond in real time, while they’re in the spotlight. 

Phase 3: Post-sponsorship

Once the peak of your sponsorship is over – whether it spanned ten minutes or six months – it’s important to keep measuring the campaign and do a deep dive into performance to find the real, long-term ROI.

Let’s look at how you can maximize this analysis.

Forever potential

When big events air on TV, they’re only shown once or twice. But online, these moments can last forever. And this is where your brand can maximize your ROI. 

You can continue to track a sponsorship’s success even once the event is way beyond its end date. 

Soccer team sponsors are a great example. Their logos appear on a team’s jerseys for the duration of a contract, but photos of key moments in games – moments that these jerseys appear in – might be reshared for many years after the fact. 

A long-standing sponsor of a successful soccer team will consistently reap the rewards of the team (and its players). The sponsor can become synonymous with first-class skill, as the brand’s logo is proudly displayed in every single photo of the soccer team’s successes.

Keeping thorough notes on the methodology, dates, and results of your sponsorship measurements will help you benchmark future events and analyze which of your sponsorship deals are working best for you.

Determining ROI 

Paying attention to online mentions about your brand is vital to truly measure the ROI of your campaigns as a higher sponsorship budget doesn’t necessarily equate to a high return. Competitor analysis can be helpful here. 

Here's an example to demonstrate. Let’s take a popular soccer tournament which ended in a huge head-to-head final between Team A and Team B. Team A is sponsored by one company and the opposition by another. And let’s say that Team A’s brand spent $10 million on their sponsorship, while Team B’s sponsor spent $20 million. 

Using a social listening tool, like Brandwatch’s Image Insights, we might discover that Team A’s sponsor was mentioned twice as much as Team B’s – despite B’s increased spending. In terms of cost per mention, Team A has delivered a much better result for their sponsor. 

Measuring these results over a long period of time and bringing them along to negotiations when renewal talks come around can help brands negotiate for better deals.

Distributing the results

When you’re spending big on sponsorship deals, there are likely going to be a number of key stakeholders interested in the performance metrics. Using the various tools above, you’ll be able to keep each of them up to date on the whole spectrum of success metrics that show how a campaign is doing. 

A tool like Vizia allows you to display the most up-to-date data on the sponsorship campaign, including: 

• Influenced page views
• Conversion rate
• Number of traditional media hits
• Emoji use around the campaign
• Influencers and thought leaders sharing their thoughts
• Sentiment
• And much more 

Distributing live results and summary results with easy-to-dissect visuals across your company is a great way to ensure that everyone in the organization knows about the success of your sponsorship campaign while it’s going on – and once it’s over.