• by Ken Liebeskind , May 24, 2002

In a tight field, the strong brand association with its wildly popular print companion gives ESPN.com the edge. ESPN.com draws on the popularity of ESPN TV for its own success, and even works with the network on advertising campaigns, such as one for Wendy’s that combines an online poll with ESPN’s popular nightly SportsCenter show. Visitors to the SportsCenter showcase at ESPN.com vote on the sports highlight they want to see on TV. After they vote, a Wendy’s pop-up ad appears. The winning highlight appears on SportsCenter, with advertising from Wendy’s, of course.

“The brand association with ESPN is very important,” says Riley McDonough, vice president of sales. “When advertisers put their money online, the budgets aren’t large, so they don’t go to too many sites. They gravitate to the brand they trust, so we benefit from that.”

The TV tie-in is just one of the advertising innovations from ESPN.com. In September, it launched the Big Impression unit, a large-size ad that appears on the top right corner of the home page and is sold on a daily basis. It’s the only ad on the home page, seen by 3 to 4 million unique users a day. A number of big-name advertisers have used it, including Universal Studios, AT&T, Nike, Gatorade, and Ford.

The company also specializes in units from third-party providers, including Unicast Superstitials, Eyeblasters, Shoskeles, and other Flash-based units.

A key to the success of advertising at ESPN.com is its targetability. “We deliver a very defined demographic,” McDonough says. The core audience is 18-to-34-year-old men, a prime group advertisers frequently clamor for. They can target their ads to specific parts of the site, from Page 2, a page of offbeat sports features written by Hunter Thompson and others, to Major League Baseball scores. The company has done demographic profiles of each area of the site, giving advertisers the information they need to effectively target.

The company also sells sponsorship opportunities for its fantasy games, with Visa and Ultimate TV cosponsoring fantasy football.

A survey participant lauds ESPN.com for offering “lots of different variables online that target across different sports or genres.”

Unique audience: 11.4 million Time per person: 49 minutes 2001 ad revenue, through Sept: $34.8 million