• by Wayne Friedman , April 11, 2025

Top-scoring brand and advertising recall for the 2025 NCAA Men’s March Madness Tournament winners include Freshpet, Geico, Dick’s Sporting Goods, TurboTax, and Buffalo Wild Wings, according to MarketCast.

These brands scored anywhere from 34% above the norm (Freshpet) to 20% above norm (Buffalo Wild Wings). The data comes from MarketCast Brand Effect, a daily survey of 20,000 viewers.

Factoring in overall national TV ad spend, Freshpet and TurboTax grabbed the highest recall-to-spend efficiency in terms of this group’s brand recall.

Freshpet spent $2.4 million for the entire three-week event, according to EDO Ad EnGage; TurboTax was at $6.5 million. The biggest spend in this group was from Geico, at $22.5 million, was followed by Dick’s Sporting Goods ($12.7 million) and Buffalo Wild Wings ($11.6 million).

For the entire three-week event, total estimated national TV advertising revenues amounted to $649.2 million -- for CBS, TBS, TNT, and truTV -- from 2,494 total advertising airings, according to EDO Ad EnGage. A year earlier, with more airings (2,551), EDO estimates national TV ad revenues came in at $791.3 million.

The key end-of-tournament three games -- the “Final Four” (two semifinals and finals) -- witnessed a 21% gain in average viewers to 16.4 million over the year before.

The finals -- featuring University of Florida’s closely fought victory over University of Houston (76-74) -- were way up to a strong 22% to 18.1 million viewers versus the previous year.

The entire tournament had an improvement of 3% to 10.2 million viewers.