• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, April 8, 2015

With March Madness officially over, data from ad campaigns run during the games is now rolling in.

Extreme Reach, a Needham, Mass. digital media company, analyzed brand lift from advertising campaigns that aired during the Final 4 Championship games. Brands from three sectors -- automobile, telecom and technology -- stood out. Cadillac, Apple, and Sprint had the highest brand lift during this time out of all companies analyzed.

In the automobile sector, Cadillac saw a 74.6% lift, followed by Mercedes-Benz at 73.3%, and BMW at 70%. The Apple iWatch advertising campaign saw a 66.5% lift, followed by Tidal at 65.9%, and LG at 61.2%. Finally, Sprint saw a 77.1% brand lift, T-Mobile a 69.9% lift, and AT&T a 65.4% brand lift.

The Extreme Reach report said about  one in every four commercials during the tournament was customized for a basketball audience. This helped brands experience lift, with the greatest coming from people in higher income brackets.

During the Final 4 games, about 71.8% of the 400,000 people surveyed watched on TV and 16.2% online, while 12.0% watched a combination of TV and online, per Extreme Reach.

Perhaps the low online viewership had something to do with the poor quality of streaming and slow Web site load times. In late-March research from Harris Poll for SOASTA, 37% of survey respondents said slow loading times was the top technology concern of those following the games online. Lag time and time delays followed with 28%, then caching or unresponsiveness with 22% each, to found out the top four complaints per eMarketer, citing the Harris Poll data.

Google also released search trends from the last NCAA championship with all the data pulled during the game. Grayson Allen from the Duke Blue Devils was the most-searched-for player during the game, followed by Frank Kaminsky with the Wisconsin Badgers. The remaining players rounding out the top five -- Jahlil Okafor, Tyus Jone, and  Quinn Cook -- were all with the Duke Blue Devils.