VISA is an official FIFA partner since 2007, and in May, just in time for the World Cup, they launched their global advertising campaign featuring Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a famous Swedish football player. Ibrahimovic may have finished his career in the Swedish national team after the Euro 2016, however, both his skills and face are still recognisable by everyone making him a great ambassador for the FIFA’s partner brand, at least in theory. Gemius checked the results recorded by the VISA’s campaign in three countries: Poland, Germany and Russia.

The analysis, prepared based on our unique gemiusAdReal study includes online video ads displayed on both PCs and laptops in the week 11th of June till the 17th of June, 2018, in the week of World Cup’s opening match. VISA’s campaign reached almost 1.5 M of the Internet users in Russia, around 1.2 M of people in Germany and noted the least spectacular score in Poland, with less than 1 M users (~around 900k). VISA’s reach, however, was the highest in Poland: 4.8 per cent. To compare, in Germany and Russia it amounted to 3 and 2.6 per cent respectively.

Russia: 80 per cent of viewable impressions

Around 50 per cent of all VISA’s impressions in Poland (56 per cent) and Germany (50 per cent share) displayed to the users met the international viewability standards, so at least 50 per cent of the ad stayed in the user’s viewport for as long as 2 seconds minimum. Russia’s score is unbelievably higher as 80 per cent of all impressions can be deemed viewable. Russia also noted the longest average viewing time: 14.22 seconds (to compare: in Poland the recorded viewability time is around 9.43 seconds).

Facebook is king in Poland and Germany

VISA’s World Cup campaign included various length materials, the standard ones lasting 15 20 and 30 seconds, and the shortest ones (from 4 to 7 seconds) to broadcast on social media channels. What is interesting however, only in Poland VISA utilised their 15 and 20s materials also on Facebook and it is also where their campaign noted the biggest (around 40 per cent) share of impressions for this country. In Germany and Russia, the social media website share of all impressions was significantly lower and can be amounted to 15 per cent and as low as 4 per cent respecitvely.

In Poland, the other top publishers for VISA’s campaign were: TVP Group (25 per cent share) and Onet Group (12 per cent). In Germany the top position belonged to the local publishing group, Axel Springer and in Russia the biggest share of impressions was noted on Tvazavr.ru, a local VOD platform.