Internet Sponsorships

ABSTRACT

This paper considers how the Internet can be used to leverage commercial sponsorships to enhance audience attitudes toward the sponsor. Definitions are offered that distinguish the terms leverage and activation with respect to sponsorship linked marketing; leveraging encompasses all marketing communications collateral to the sponsorship investment, whereas activation relates to those communications that encourage interaction with the sponsor.

Although activation in many instances may be limited to the immediate event-based audience, leveraging sponsorships via sponsors’ Web sites enables activation at the mass-media audience level. Results of a Web site navigation experiment demonstrate that activational sponsor Web sites promote more favorable attitudes than do nonactivational Web sites.