The Milan Cortina Winter Olympic Games will begin on February 6 with an opening ceremony that will also kick off advertisers looking to make the most of the global event.

Even though it's only been two years since the last Olympics, marketers launching their campaigns this month do so in a rapidly changing landscape where formats, targeting, reach, and technologies look remarkably different than they did in the Paris Summer Games.

"Total attention share for the Olympics continues to fragment across media channels," said Dave Fernandes, senior planning director at FUSE Create. "Planners are increasingly leaning into an omni-channel mix for Olympics adjacency, targeting fans of the Olympics through multiple contextually relevant touchpoints."

Here's what marketers need to know about these unique Winter Games.

A sporting chance

This year, the Milan Cortina Games will share its first weekend with Super Bowl LX. While some may be concerned that the saturation of sporting events might split the audiences, there's no denying the massive reach that the Olympics can achieve and marketers' budgets reflect that.

• Total worldwide media ad spending is set to grow nearly 10% (9.7%) this year to reach $1.15 trillion, according to EMARKETER's December 2025 forecast.

"The overlap effectively turns February into a single, extended premium advertising

moment, where the Super Bowl and the Olympics reinforce rather than compete with

one another, driving heightened demand, premium pricing, and cross-event buys," said Rita Steinberg, vice president of media at FUSE Create. "As a result, brands are shifting away from one-night 'spike' strategies toward multi-week storytelling, using the Super Bowl to spark attention and the Olympics to sustain reach, frequency, and narrative impact across linear, streaming, and social."

Olympic reach is massive. About 5 billion people globally engaged with Paris Summer Olympics content across platforms, according to YouTube and the International Olympic Committee, underscoring the Games’ unmatched scale.

• NBCUniversal, the broadcaster for both events, announced at the start of the year that it had already sold out ad space for the winter Olympics.

Snowballing channels

Advertising channels have shifted a great deal since the last Olympics, including connected TV (CTV) and retail media.

"Each of these channels should be appraised by how it contributes to a brand's overall

Olympics funnel," said Fernandes. "Connected TV should be judged for its contribution to overall multi-screen reach as an awareness driver."

CTV has seen marked growth. With widespread consumer adoption of CTV devices/services, enhanced targeting capabilities, and measurement tools, marketers have celebrated the rise of the ad format.

• US CTV ad spending will rise 14.5% this year to reach $37.95 billion, according to our December 2025 forecast.
• We forecast CTV ad spending will surpass linear TV ad spending by 2028.

Netflix and YouTube lead the pack of CTV service providers, with YouTube giving marketers a massive opportunity to reach audiences during the Winter Games.

• Some 17% of all people who engaged with the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics content worldwide, about 850 million people, did so on YouTube, according to YouTube's company blog.

The growth of retail media networks over the last few years also uncovers new ways for Olympics marketers to get their brands in front of consumers.

"Retail media closes the loop by driving purchase and should be appraised ultimately on results whether through retailer attribution, MMM or incrementality testing," said Fernandes. "There’s no crystal ball for conversions."

Gold medal strategies

Successful Winter Olympics campaigns will take advantage of new technologies and omnichannel techniques. For marketers, it's showing up for the games.

• At least half of all generations and over two-thirds of millennials (67%) say it’s important or very important for brands to get involved in cultural events like the Olympics, according to a February 2025 report from Magna Global and Sightly.

It will be notable to watch how marketers take advantage of the massive AI investments that the industry has seen over the last few years, and how that will shape both creative and operational aspects of campaigns.

"One strategy to watch during this year’s Olympics will be AI-driven creative optimization," said Fernandes. "Brands will be able to test creative variations in real time, swapping athletes, messaging, and offers as storylines of the Games evolve rather than locking into a hero edit early on."

But above all, Fernandes advises showing up in multiple channels with cohesive campaigns to stand out from the advertising noise.

"Relying on TV-only campaigns featuring undifferentiated, generically inspirational spots that are light on brand or product story will fade into the background of already cluttered ad breaks," he said. "Combine that with overpaying for inclusion in 'logo-soup' and the lack of meaningful brand effects will speak for themselves."

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.