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Male Opps: PGA Tour loses CMO amid drops in spend (Score 48)

The PGA Tour Superstore. We will, of course, keep you updated on the search, but in the meantime, the company may need extra marketing support. Reach out soon to see if you have an opportunity here, readers.

Though it's currently without a CMO, the Tour's marketing team grew over the past year. The company hired digital audience development marketer Kasey Schmidt in July 2021, senior marketing partnerships manager Christie Greiner in October 2021 and advertising strategy and planning manager Sadie Akers in November 2021.

According to iSpot, the company ended up allocating roughly $4m toward national TV commercials last year, 31% less than the roughly $5.8m it allocated in 2020. The Tour's 2021 commercials targeted male sports enthusiasts watching PGA Tour Golf (shocking, I know), College Football, RightThisMinute and College Basketball.

In 2021, Pathmatics reports the Tour spent approximately $1.8m on digital ads, down 10% from the approximately $2m it spent in 2020. It earned around 297.1m digital impressions in 2021 via desktop display (45%), Facebook (25%), Twitter (14%), mobile display (10%) and Instagram (6%) ads. Top site destinations for last year's desktop display ads included usatoday.com  (37%), freep.com, golfdigest.com, detroitnews.com and yahoo.com.

Magellan shows that, within the past 12 months, the Tour has aired ~34 podcast ads.

The company tends to target male sports enthusiasts in general. Spend will hopefully pick back up once it finds a new CMO, and in the meantime, Winmo's intent insights shows that it's currently showing a high level of interest in campaigns. This could also result in higher spend. For now, like I said, it may need extra marketing assistance. Per Kantar data, the Tour also invests in print and local broadcast, and its overall spend (especially for print) has risen steadily over the past couple of years. Sellers able to offer high-ROI strategies among male, sports-oriented audiences should get in touch soon to determine more details regarding what opportunity you might have here.

Agency & martech readers - Since a new CMO may lead the Tour to conduct an agency review, keep the company on your radar for future work. You may also want to reach out now to remain top-of-mind when a new CMO starts. Troika Media Group.