Fox Sports Digital has created a new online and mobile advertising product designed to leverage the reach of the company’s various social media extensions on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other similar platforms. Fox Sports Engage will offer to advertisers aggregated inventory across the social media channels to place branded content. The effort will offer guaranteed views depending on the combination of various platforms used in a particular campaign. “You hear a lot about the creation and development of branded content, but there’s still a lot of complexity around ROI and pricing, and distribution of that content often gets left behind in that conversation as some sort of afterthought,” said Fox Sports Exec VP/Digital Pete Vlastelica. “But we have great predictability on audience around on our social media channels now. That was not necessarily the case a year ago, and we think this brings a lot more transparency to this kind of marketing. We’re past the point of simply having audiences simply coming to us, so this is a move to harness the sizable audiences that congregate around our brand elsewhere.” Trial campaigns with Fox Sports Engage thus far have been conducted by Fiat and Nationwide. The Yardbarker affiliate network of sites, also a holding within Fox Sports Digital, will be a distribution option within Fox Sports Engage. Fox Sports Digital VP/Sales Integration Nick Freeman will be running point on Fox Sports Engage.
