The stakes are high when it comes to advertising during football’s biggest games as the cost of advertising continues to rise, with the average 30-second TV ad during the 2023-24 Sunday Night Football season priced at $882K. With record viewership at the College Football Playoff and the Super Bowl drawing in 123.7 million average viewers, the largest TV audience on record, it’s no surprise that brands are willing to pay those prices since football games are prime time for reaching engaged audiences. In fact, an estimated 51% of viewers search for an ad they saw during the game, underscoring the potential of second-screen engagement to amplify campaign impact. Whether you advertise on TV during these games or not, brands are exploring how they can use football season to drive a deeper connection to their audience. To do this, brands need data driven strategies.
In this blog post, we’ll reveal audience segments designed for you to craft tailored marketing strategies that resonate with football fans in the stands and on the couch. You can find the complete audience segment name in the appendix.
Make a game-winning play with Experian Audiences
With playoff season fast approaching, it’s the perfect time to go on the offensive and target football fans. Utilize Experian’s syndicated audiences to ensure your marketing messages resonate with fans when they’re the most engaged.
- Experian’s 2,400+ syndicated audiences are available directly on over 30 leading television, social, programmatic advertising platforms, and directly within Audigent for activation within private marketplaces (PMPs).
- Reach consumers based on who they are, where they live, and their household makeup. Experian ranked #1 in accuracy by Truthset for key demographic attributes.
- Access to unique audiences through Experian’s Partner Audiences available on Experian’s data marketplace, within Audigent for activation in PMPs and directly on platforms like DirectTV, Dish, Magnite, OpenAP, and The Trade Desk.
Four football audience categories to add to your advertising lineup
Football fans come in all shapes, sizes, and viewing habits. From dedicated supporters to casual viewers, targeting the right audience can make or break your campaign.
Here are four football audience categories you can target:
- Sports enthusiasts
- College football fans
- 21+ audiences
- TV viewers
Let’s huddle up and break down the audience segments within each category. Whether it’s tailgating, tuning in, or cheering from the stands, these insights will get your campaign into the end zone.
Sports enthusiasts
Whether they’re following their favorite teams, attending games in person, or watching professional sports events on TV, football fans are deeply engaged, making them an ideal target for advertisers looking to score big.
Here are five audiences to target:
- NFL Enthusiasts
- Football (FLA/Fair Lending Friendly)1
- Sports Enthusiasts
- NFL Stadium Visitors
- Professionals Sports Event
College football fans
College football fans bring unmatched passion and loyalty, with bowl games during the 2023 season drawing on average of 4.6 million viewers across 40 total games—a 5% increase year-over-year. From students to alumni, these fans represent an invaluable opportunity for advertisers to connect with a deeply invested audience.
Here are four audiences to target to connect with passionate college football fans:
- College Football Stadium Visitors
- College Football Bowls
- College Students
- College Sports Venues
21+ audiences
With 84% of U.S adults reporting that they drink alcohol while watching football on TV, targeting 21+ audiences during game season is a winning play. Whether they’re cracking open a cold one at a tailgate, hosting a game-day party, or relaxing on the couch, these audiences represent a key audience for brands looking to tap into football culture.
Here are four audiences that you can target this post season:
- Imported Light Beer Enthusiasts
- Domestic/Imported Beer
- High-end Spirit Drinkers
- Discretionary spend: Alcohol and wine $331 – $726
These audiences can help you serve up campaigns that pour directly into the heart of football fandom.
TV viewers
Football games attract some of the most engaged and diverse TV audiences, with 85% of sports fans preferring to watch live sports on TV rather than in-person. Notably, for the first time, viewers aged 18 to 49 spent the majority of their sports viewing time (54%) via streaming. This shift highlights the immense opportunity for advertisers to connect with highly attentive viewers tuned into every play.
Here are seven audiences that you can use to create a game-winning strategy to reach engaged TV watching football fans:
- Cable Satellite or Streaming Network Subscribers
- Streaming Video: High Spenders
- Cord Cutters
- Cable and Streaming TV Service Subscribers
- Paid TV High Spenders
- Screen Size – Large
- Co-Watchers
Whether they’re catching the action on a large TV screen or streaming from their phone, these audiences will help you craft campaigns that deliver results with highly engaged viewers.
Score big with Experian this postseason
As some of football’s biggest games approach, it’s time to huddle up and connect with consumers who live for the thrill of the game.Whether they’re tuning in to cheer for their favorite teams, tailgating with friends, or enjoying the game-day experience from home, Experian Marketing Data provides the playbook to score big with targeting, enrichment, and activation. With Experian’s data-driven insights, you can turn every opportunity into a game-winning play!
Need a custom audience? Reach out to our audience team and we can help you build and activate an Experian audience on the platform of your choice. Additionally, work with Experian’s network of data providers to build audiences and send to an Audigent PMP for activation.
Connect with us
You can activate our syndicated audiences on-the-shelf of most major platforms. For a full list of Experian’s syndicated audiences and activation destinations, download our syndicated audiences guide.
Explore our other seasonal audiences that you can activate today.
1 “Fair Lending Friendly” indicates data fields that Experian has made available without use of certain demographic attributes that may increase the likelihood of discriminatory practices prohibited by the Fair Housing Act (“FHA”) and Equal Credit Opportunity Act (“ECOA”). These excluded attributes include, but may not be limited to, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, disability, handicap, family status, ancestry, sexual orientation, unfavorable military discharge, and gender. Experian’s provision of Fair Lending Friendly indicators does not constitute legal advice or otherwise assures your compliance with the FHA, ECOA, or any other applicable laws. Clients should seek legal advice with respect to your use of data in connection with lending decisions or application and compliance with applicable laws.
Appendix
Sports enthusiasts
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Activities and Entertainment > NFL Enthusiasts
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Sports and Recreation > Sports Enthusiast
- Mobile Location Models > Visits > NFL Stadium Visitors
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Sports > Football (FLA / Fair Lending Friendly)2 Travel Intent > Activities > Professional Sports Event
College sports fans
- Mobile Location Models > Visits > University Stadium College Football Visitor
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Sports > College Football Bowls
- Mobile Location Models > Visits > College Students
- Mobile Location Models > Visits > College Sport Venues
21+ audiences
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Activities and Entertainment > Imported Light Beer Enthusiasts
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > In-Market > Domestic/Imported Beer
- Lifestyle and Interests (Affinity) > Retail > High-end Spirit Drinkers
- Financial – Analytics IQ > Discretionary Spend > Alcohol and Wine: $331-$726
TV viewers
- Television (TV) > Household/Family Viewing > Cable Satellite or Streaming Network Subscribers
- Retail Shoppers: Purchase Based > Entertainment > Streaming/Video/Audio/CTV/Cable TV: Streaming Video: High Spenders
- Television (TV) > Household/Family Viewing > Cord Cutters
- Television (TV) > Household/Family Viewing > Cable and Streaming Service Subscribers
- Television (TV) > TV Enthusiasts > Paid TV High Spenders
- Television (TV) > Viewing Device Type > Screen Size – Large
- Television (TV) > Household/Family Viewing > Co-Watchers
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Originally appeared on MarTech Series Marketing’s understanding of identity has evolved rapidly over the past decade, much like the shifting media landscape itself. From the early days of basic direct mail targeting to today's complex omnichannel environment, identity has become both more powerful and more fragmented. Each era has brought new tools, challenges, and opportunities, shaping how brands interact with their customers. We’ve moved from traditional media like mail, newspapers, and linear/network TV, to cable TV, the internet, mobile devices, and apps. Now, multiple streaming platforms dominate, creating a far more complex media landscape. As a result, understanding the customer journey and reaching consumers across these various touchpoints has become increasingly difficult. Managing frequency and ensuring effective communication across channels is now more challenging than ever. This development has led to a fragmented view of the consumer, making it harder for marketers to ensure that they are reaching the right audience at the right time while also avoiding oversaturation. Marketers must now navigate a fragmented customer journey across multiple channels, each with its own identity signals, to stitch together a cohesive view of the customer. Let’s break down this evolution, era by era, to understand how identity has progressed—and where it’s headed. 2010-2015: The rise of digital identity – Cookies and MAIDs Between 2010 and 2015, the digital era fundamentally changed how marketers approached identity. Mobile usage surged during this time, and programmatic advertising emerged as the dominant method for reaching consumers across the internet. The introduction of cookies and mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) became the foundation for tracking users across the web and mobile apps. With these identifiers, marketers gained new capabilities to deliver targeted, personalized messages and drive efficiency through programmatic advertising. This era gave birth to powerful tools for targeting. Marketers could now follow users’ digital footprints, regardless of whether they were browsing on desktop or mobile. This leap in precision allowed brands to optimize spend and performance at scale, but it came with its limitations. Identity was still tied to specific browsers or devices, leaving gaps when users switched platforms. The fragmentation across different devices and the reliance on cookies and MAIDs meant that a seamless, unified view of the customer was still out of reach. 2015-2020: The age of walled gardens From 2015 to 2020, the identity landscape grew more complex with the rise of walled gardens. Platforms like Facebook, Google, and Amazon created closed ecosystems of first-party data, offering rich, self-declared insights about consumers. 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The multi-ID landscape was born, where brands had to navigate multiple identity systems across different platforms, devices, and environments. Retail media networks became another significant player in the identity game. As large retailers like Amazon and Walmart built their own advertising ecosystems, they added yet another layer of first-party data to the mix. While these platforms offer robust insights into consumer behavior, they also operate within their own walled gardens, further fragmenting the identity landscape. With cookies and MAIDs being phased out, the industry began to experiment with alternatives like first-party data, contextual targeting, and new universal identity solutions. The challenge and opportunity for marketers lies in unifying these fragmented identity signals to create a consistent and actionable view of the customer. 2025: The omnichannel imperative Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, the identity landscape will continue to evolve, but the focus remains the same: activating and measuring across an increasingly fragmented and complex media environment. Consumers now expect seamless, personalized experiences across every channel—from CTV to digital to mobile—and marketers need to keep up. The future of identity lies in interoperability, scale, and availability. Marketers need solutions that can connect the dots across different platforms and devices, allowing them to follow their customers through every stage of the journey. Identity must be actionable in real-time, allowing for personalization and relevance across every touchpoint, so that media can be measurable and attributable. Brands that succeed in 2025 and beyond will be those that invest in scalable, omnichannel identity solutions. They’ll need to embrace privacy-friendly approaches like first-party data, while also ensuring their systems can adapt to an ever-changing landscape. Adapting to the future of identity The evolution of identity has been marked by increasing complexity, but also by growing opportunity. As marketers adapt to a world without third-party cookies and MAIDs, the need for unified identity solutions has never been more urgent. Brands that can navigate the multi-ID landscape will unlock new levels of efficiency and personalization, while those that fail to adapt risk falling behind. The path forward is clear: invest in identity solutions that bridge the gaps between devices, platforms, and channels, providing a full view of the customer. The future of marketing belongs to those who can manage identity in a fragmented world—and those who can’t will struggle to stay relevant. 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