Case Study Commerce TV, Audio & Display

How Sony Connected Thursday Night Football to New-to-Brand Sales and Brand Lift

Tinuiti designed a multi-game Thursday Night Football strategy that paired premium live sports reach with interactive shopping and closed-loop retail measurement—driving 65% of campaign-attributed sales from customers new to Sony on Amazon, along with lifts in brand favorability and consideration.

The Challenge

As an official technology partner of the NFL, Sony Electronics wanted to make the high-energy reach of Thursday Night Football work harder during the peak holiday shopping season.

The opportunity was bigger than visibility. Sony wanted to turn TNF viewers into active shoppers during the game, acquire customers who had never before purchased the brand on Amazon, and understand how exposure during the broadcast influenced the complete journey through to purchase.

That required a strategy that could both build the brand and drive retail action in the same campaign–backed up with the measurement receipts to prove success on both fronts.

Results

We were very excited to leverage our NFL partnership with this TNF campaign and were thrilled with the results. The ability to not only measure brand impact but also retail sales—a true full-funnel view—was invaluable.

Maya WassermanHead of Marketing, Sony Electronics

The strategy

To maximize Sony’s investment across multiple broadcasts, Tinuiti designed each game to do two jobs: reach relevant audiences at scale and give them a clear path to act.

Tailor the Broadcast Experience

Rather than show every TNF viewer the same Sony ad, Tinuiti paired audience personas with distinct creative. During the November 13 broadcast, for example, viewers in Boston and other selected New England markets could see Pats quarterback Drake Maye featured with Sony’s WH-1000XM6 headphones, while viewers identified as headphone shoppers were served creative with all of Sony’s NFL athletes promoting the same product.

Interactive Video Ads then added a shoppable prompt to the television screen. Depending on the interactive experience served to the household, viewers could use their remote to add the featured product to their Amazon cart or scan the screen with their phone—giving them a direct route from the ad to the product without having to search for it later.

Give Viewers More Than One Opportunity to Act

Tinuiti timed an in-game Retail Deal ahead of the holiday shopping peak, giving viewers an immediate reason to explore Sony products. After the broadcast, sponsored ads re-engaged TNF-exposed audiences as they shopped on Amazon, extending the opportunity beyond game night.

Connect the Broadcast to What Happened Next

Amazon Marketing Cloud and Amazon Retail Purchases insights allowed Tinuiti to compare the paths audiences took, whether they later encountered a sponsored ad, visited a product page, added an item to their cart, completed a purchase, or became a new-to-brand customer. That connected view showed how the live broadcast and follow-up media worked together and gave Tinuiti the information needed to optimize the campaign across subsequent games.

Why it Matters

Premium reach didn’t sit above performance. It made the media that followed work harder. Audiences reached through both TNF and follow-up sponsored ads visited Sony product pages at twice the rate of those exposed only to sponsored ads—evidence that the broadcast strengthened lower-funnel media rather than operating apart from it.

By pairing live sports scale with interactive commerce and closed-loop measurement, Tinuiti helped Sony increase brand favorability and consideration while reaching new customers. The campaign created a model for making future brand-building investments more accountable.