The World Cup made advertising more expensive. That was predictable. The more useful finding is what happened to the brands that had a natural reason to be in the conversation.

Creator-marketing platform Billo reviewed more than 13,000 creator-made video ads across 15 e-commerce categories on Meta, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. As reported by MadTech Magazine, average media spending attached to a single video ad was 17% higher in June than the monthly average from July through September 2025. Thirteen of the 15 categories it tracked became more expensive.

Sporting goods stood apart. Its ads produced a 28.9% hook rate — the highest among the categories in the study. Purchases linked to those ads rose 26% against the category’s 2025 monthly average, while click-through rates increased about 31%.

That did not make the ads cheap. Spend per sporting-goods ad was still about 37% higher than its 2025 benchmark. But the category generated roughly 15% more revenue per advertising dollar while spending about 16% less per ad than the average across the other categories. The products belonged in the moment. The creative did not have to force the connection.

That is an important distinction for anyone reading event data. A broad audience is not the same thing as a useful audience. A company can buy attention at a premium and still be irrelevant to the people who receive the ad.

Big events create an understandable temptation: spend harder while the audience is watching. For a small business, that can be the most expensive instinct in the room. Global brands can buy sponsorships, television, social placement, and creator campaigns at the same time. A local or specialist business cannot win a contest built around sheer presence.

Billo’s chief executive, Donatas Smailys, described the alternative plainly: find a more relevant way to get noticed. That does not mean adding a football reference to an unrelated product. It means starting with a genuine connection between what the audience cares about now and what the business can credibly offer.

The sporting-goods category had that connection ready-made. Other businesses need to find their own version: a seasonal need, a local event, a customer problem that becomes urgent at a particular moment, or a creator whose audience already understands why the product matters.

The discipline lies in being able to explain the link in one ordinary sentence. If the connection needs a long explanation, customers will probably feel the same hesitation. Relevance is not a decorative theme; it is a reason for the message to arrive now.

The study also offers a disciplined way to respond when event-driven ad inflation eases. Do not place the full budget behind one polished video because it looked good in the approval meeting. Build several shorter versions with different opening hooks, people, and points of view. Put a modest amount behind each. Then let watch time, clicks, and sales decide what deserves more money.

That is not glamorous. It is more useful. A business gets information before it commits its budget, and it gives the market a chance to reject the wrong message cheaply.

The World Cup final is over, but the operating principle remains. When attention is scarce, the strongest creative is not the one that reaches the most people. It is the one that gives the right people a reason to stop.