August 26th, 2021, Hoang Nguyen
After closing a chapter on its seventh season, Love Island may prove to be ITV’s most successful series yet. The finale of season 7 just wrapped up earlier this week, and according to Variety, drew a record number of viewers beating out both last season’s finale and the most viewed season 7 episode.
Love Island has long cornered the hard-to-reach youth market and a look at the demographic make-up of Love Island fans suggests why brands are eager to get in front of this audience — 54% are between the ages of 18-34 and 63% are women.
To get a sense of the business impact on brands that partner with Love Island, YouGov tracked eight of the nine major sponsorships that happened this year. Data from YouGov BrandIndex, a tool that monitors public perceptions toward brands on a daily basis, reveals several brands saw a boost in Ad Awareness during the eight-weeks that Love Island aired on ITV 2.
The show’s main sponsor Just Eat saw its highest Ad Awareness near the second week of airing (36.3% of Britons noticed an ad for the brand on July 8). The takeaway service advertised at the start and end of commercial breaks and sponsored the official Love Island podcast.
Love Island’s official partner for gym and workout gear, JD Sports, also saw a lift in Ad Awareness and also reached its highest score in the second week of airing (11.4% saw an ad for the brand).
Both Boots and Cloud Nine provided this year’s participants with beauty and personal care products. Boots’ highest Ad Awareness came near the season finale, with roughly a fifth of Britons saying they saw an ad for the brand on August 22 (20.3%). Cloud Nine’s highest Ad Awareness came two weeks into the seventh season where awareness rose roughly two percentage points (2.2% on July 11).
Approaching the fourth week of airing, alcohol brand WKD saw its Ad Awareness rise to 3.1%. In the fifth week of this season of Love Island’s airing, Wrigley’s Extra saw its Ad Awareness rise to reach 2.7% of the English public.
The official sponsor of Love Island’s podcast this year, Spotify, had an average Ad Awareness of 9% during the show’s duration. The audio streaming brand saw a bump in this measure of brand health approaching the third week of airing (13.4% saw an ad for Spotify on July 17).
Tinder became Love Island’s first ever dating partner this year and its ads managed to capture 4.3% of Britons’ eyes in the fifth week of airing.
Of the eight sponsors YouGov tracked this year, nearly all apart from Spotify ended their eight-week campaign with an Ad Awareness score higher than where they began. Our data shows that all eight brands managed to drum up an increase in Ad Awareness at some point during the campaign.
Methodology: The data is from YouGov BrandIndex and based on the daily interviews of British adults aged 18 and over. Sample sizes vary day-to-day by brand. All interviews were conducted online and respondents were asked, “Which of the following have you seen an advertisement for in the past two weeks?”
A version of this story first appeared on The Drum