TORONTO – While a recent survey by Solutions Research Group showed Canadians have pretty good ad recall, data on TV usage during the Summer Olympic Games was pretty interesting.
While one-in-three Canadians who followed the 17-day Olympics coverage on TV and online in Canada recall the McDonald’s brand as one of the sponsors or major advertisers during the Olympics, followed by Coca-Cola, Visa, Bell and RBC, they also paint a picture of consumers very reliant on television.
Sixty-four percent of the 1,000 people surveyed right after the Olympics said they followed ‘whatever was on generally,’ and that TV was the main source for Canadians, with Internet in second place. Sixty-two percent said TV was very important to them in keeping up with the Olympics overall. Internet was very important to 31%.
CBC.ca was the favourite web destination for 48% to keep up with the Games, followed by TSN.ca at 23%. Just 10% chose the NBC’s web site nbcolympics.com.
As well, 42% of those who followed the Olympics, visited cbc.ca during the event and gave the host broadcaster good marks as 40% described their experience as “excellent” and 55% said “good.” The most popular activities on the web site were to check the medal standings (72%), followed by reading Olympics news (56%), and checking the TV schedule (50%). Thirty-one percent said they streamed/watched videos on the web site.
The office was an important place for following the Olympics, too as those who use a PC at work were 30% more likely to visit CBC.ca and twice as likely to subscribe to RSS feeds or email alerts than those who use a PC mainly at home.
The information in this release comes from Olympics Special Edition of the Fast Forward Quarterly syndicated study. The results cited are based on a post-Olympics survey of 1,000 online Canadians aged 12 and older during the last week of August 2008 using a professionally-managed panel representative of the population by age, gender, region, and ethnicity.
