As we get ever closer to the opening of the London Olympics on Friday, a lot of focus is going on how brands are to captalise on the event.

Given the strict, and controversial, restrictions on Olympic advertising clever online viral marketing may be the most effective way to get a piece of the action for most companies. The main sponsors, of course, are at a significant advantage, and are using their status to boost their online presence.

London based agency Socialgility have been monitoring the sponsors from 100 days out from the opening ceremony, to see how they are using their status online. To do it, they have come up with a leader board.

It currently ranks Coca Cola, British Airways and Adidas in the top positions having taken over from early leaders Procter & Gamble, and Cadbury.

One of the brands that Socialgility sees with the greatest potential is French energy company EDF. Adecco came bottom of all three catgories, with Atos and ArcelorMittal not far behind.

Socialgity also noted that some brands started using their Olympics positioning earlier than others. Their co-founder Niall Cook can though see advantages both in being an early pace setter, and sprinting to the finish:

“No one strategy is right. Early movers with a dedicated London 2012 presence have benefitted from months of active social media engagement but from a standing start. Others have, by virtue of using their existing presence and established audience, had the benefit of concentration of effort as public attention peaks.

Socialgility aren’t the only social media company monitoring the Olympics. Online video platform Unruly has decided to pit the official sponsors against each other, creating an online sprint to the finish.

As with Socialgility ‘s study P&G and EDF both do well in terms of social media mentions. Unruly Media has placed P&G on top with 2.1 million shares followed by EDF with 120k and Samsung with 98k.

The idea of that the platform is that it tracks all the shares of official sponsors videos across the social networks.

“Basically, using the Unruly’s Viral Video Chart – the most comprehensive online video database ever created – it tracks the total number of shares across Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere for each brand. The eight brands with the most shares then race for gold,” Unruly says.

Unruly have also put together the first every Social Video Lab to help brands re-energise their efforts. It further proves the growing importance of visual media online.

The more shares a sponsor earns across all their online ads, the faster their runner will move along the track, taking them nearer to the finish line and closer to being an advertising champion.