CorpComms Magazine

As advertisers look to secure athletic endorsements, Fish Eye Analytics, a social media monitoring service, has published its own market valuations identifying the biggest PR winners of the Winter Olympics.

The company tracked 20,000 news sources, calculating the amount of online news and social media coverage of all the gold medallists between 12 February and 1 March. It then assigned an online marketing value to each athlete using an algorithm that factors in daily online readership and the total marketing value of its audience (incorporating data like the sentiment of the piece, the source's credibility, the overlap of media audiences and repeat mentions from the one source on the same day).

American skier Lindsey Vonn's sex symbol status, boosted by her appearance on the front of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition, has her racing into the lead as the most valuable online brand, generating $65 million (£43.5 million) of online coverage during Vancouver 2010. America has proved the champion of the athletic assets, boasting Fish Eye's top five Olympic marketing icons.

The analysis also illustrates the breakdown of coverage of each athlete on different forms of social media. By this calculation snowboarder Shaun White is the champion of the newest media tools, receiving almost a quarter of his coverage from blogs and Twitter.

Lindsey Vonn - Alpine Skiing - $65 million

Bode Miller - Alpine Skiing - $45 million

Shaun White - Snowboarding - $37 million

Evan Lysacek - Figure Skating - $28 million

Shani Davis - Speed Skating - $25 million

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