Following the FIFA World Cup Final, Captify, the leader in Search Intelligence, has revealed new analysis showing the brands that won – and lost – consumers' attention during the tournament. 

Drawing from billions of real-time search signals across the open web, Captify's data also reveals that football fans are doing far more than following the action on the pitch. From booking travel and buying merchandise to researching sponsors and planning viewing experiences, the tournament has become a powerful driver of consumer behaviour.

The tournament also reinforced the power of advertising around major sporting events. David Beckham emerged as one of the competition's most prominent commercial faces, starring in campaigns for brands including Adidas, Bank of America, McDonald's, Pepsi, Lay's, Verizon, Stella Artois, and Home Depot, highlighting how creative activation and iconic personalities can capture consumer attention beyond sponsorship rights alone.

Key findings

• Search performance separates the winners from the sponsors: Search performance separates the winners from the sponsors: Dove Men+Care leads the sponsors performance, at times performing 14x over baseline and averaging out at 8.81x. 
• AI is emerging as a tactical advantage for brands: Captify analysed brand mentions across UK AI prompts during the tournament and found Hyundai-Kia accounted for 21% of all tracked mentions, making it the most-mentioned brand, ahead of McDonald's (15%), Just Eat (11%), Lenovo (8%), Adidas (8%) and Coca-Cola (7.5%).
• The World Cup has become one of the year's biggest moments of online intent: Search interest throughout the tournament remained 14.5x higher than pre-tournament levels, with the biggest knockout matches generating search activity approaching 40x normal volumes, demonstrating the extraordinary scale of consumer engagement.  

"The World Cup created some of the biggest moments of consumer intent we see all year, with millions of fans turning to search as they plan everything from where to watch the match to what to buy and where to travel," said Emma Welch, head of client strategy at Captify.

"Our data shows that fans aren't simply searching for scores and results. They're booking travel, buying merchandise, researching brands, and planning experiences around the World Cup. As we look back on this incredible tournament, we can see how major cultural moments translate directly into commercial opportunity, giving brands an incredibly powerful window to connect with consumers when intent is at its highest."

Captify

Captify, part of Verve, enables brands to understand, activate, and measure real-time intent across the entire consumer journey, thanks to its proprietary search intent dataset. Leveraging over 15 years of machine learning expertise, Captifys's...

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