What is a sponsorship?

By classic sponsorship, we mean the marketing action taken by a brand investing money to promote itself and its products, thanks to events or information containers of a certain mass media that increase its notoriety.

History and Characteristics of Sponsorships

Sponsorship originated in the 1970s with the advent of large brands eager to show themselves to the world, ready to invest substantial amounts of money on billboards or newspapers.

The types of sponsors have evolved greatly but the basic philosophy remains the same.

In sponsorship, there are two main players:

• The sponsor: is the one who invests money to increase their brand awareness;
• The sponsee: is the one hosting the sponsor, that is, provides their container (digital or real) in exchange for money.

In theory, there is a slight difference between advertising and sponsorship. Advertising speaks directly about the product, while sponsorship showcases the brand or product in a different context such as events and mass media but in an indirect way.

The forefront of sponsorship: web advertisement

We have often talked about sponsorships on the web. Today we finally tackle the subject by understanding the differences with traditional sponsorship.

Web advertisement relies on the same dynamics of traditional sponsorship: a sponsor who invests money to increase their notoriety and a sponsee that hosts the sponsor. In web advertisement, however, there are innovative and more sophisticated elements.

Facebook ADS and Google ADS (the quintessential sponsored campaigns by Google and Facebook) are based on a kind of online auction that increases brand exposure based on the money invested, through statistics and data updated practically in real time.

Tools like the Facebook pixel and Google Tag Manager, offer possibilities that were absolutely unreachable until some time ago.

The web advertisement is based on extremely sophisticated sponsors such as Facebook's Business Manager or Google ADS itself, which allow for the creation of highly targeted advertising campaigns, meaning tailor-made for the sponsor to reach people truly interested in the topic or product, something that was not happening with traditional sponsorship.