Facebook To Track Brands during 2012 London Olympics

The social platform giant, Facebook is to measure the 2012 London Olympic Games impact on brands. It intends to track how the sponsorship brands influence is changing; while the Olympics sponsors spend time fighting for financial profit of their investment, says Financial Times.

Facebook will track how news spreads around its web pages, run polls to see how marketing messages have changed sentiment around this or that brand. This analysis will allow brands to make changes if their ads fail.

Facebook research and analytics team has already run the same initiative at the football World Cup. According to a Facebook poll, it was found that videos by Umbro, the England kit sponsor, make people who saw them more likely to buy its sportswear than those who did not.

Facebook is extremely popular and effective platform within brands of different categories from snacks to technology giants like Intel. In spring, Facebook launched a platform for its advertisers—both current and prospective ones. A bit later it presented an ability to tag brands on photos in the same way users tag other people.

Other social networks also implement such techniques of brand impact evaluation. Last year, researchers at HP found out that sentimental analysis of postings on Twitter about a new movie can predict its opening weekend takings at the box office.

Some traditional experts argue that such poll techniques lack sophistication and balance, because respondents on social networks are self-selecting and results can be distorted. However, online marketing has been underestimated by Olympics sponsors in previous years and Facebook knows what it is doing.