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On top of the World Cup 2022 with Ozone

On top of the World Cup 2022 with Ozone
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Plan the perfect goal-scoring World Cup campaign with Ozone this winter. Our analysis of audience engagement during football’s biggest tournaments is sure to net you a winner.

 

There’s nothing quite like a World Cup year. For millions of football fans –  from the die hard to the fair-weather –  the quadrennial festival of elite, international footballing excellence promises almost a month of total escapism, joy and probable hurt –  56 years and counting for fans of the Three Lions; while for the Dragons, it’s their first appearance for 64 years.

2022 will also be a first for brands as competition for consumer attention during the World Cup is set to be doubly competitive – it is happening in the midst of the Christmas golden quarter, after all. While the busiest time of year will be busier than ever, there will be many opportunities to connect with football fans engaging with the tournament. With four games per day, scheduled at 10am, 1pm, 4pm and 7pm UK times, football will be near omnipresent.

And Ozone’s premium publishers, with a brimful of punditry talent, will be building up to, reporting on and analysing every aspect of all of the footballing action.

As such, we’ve analysed audience engagement across Ozone during football’s biggest tournaments to give you some of the planning insights you’ll need to fire up your winter World Cup campaigns. And what better tournament to focus on than Euro 2020, which was the one of the key sporting and cultural moments that mattered most to 24 million Brits last year.

Across Ozone, nearly as many people read about Football as News & Politics – our single biggest content category – during the tournament.

Engagement

    • The build up: Football engagement doubled to an average of 7m daily page views compared to the annual average in the two week before Euro 2020.

 

    • Home nations: These games saw engagement explode. England vs. Croatia, for example, attracted more than 12m match day page views. England’s group stage games drove an impressive 10% page views growth vs. the daily tournament average.

 

    • It’s a knockout: Engagement surged as the tournament progressed through the knockout rounds with matchday increases and further growth the day after. Matchday page views for the semi finals were +44% higher than the tournament average whereas the next day page views were double the average.

 

  • United in defeat: It goes without saying that the day with the highest engagement of the whole tournament was the day after the final. While it was a moment that many England fans wouldn’t like to repeat, we saw almost 16m page views in one day.

 

Frequency

    • Triple the frequency: Last year, our typical daily football audience of 1.3 million unique users read with an average frequency of around one article read per day. Euro 2020 tripled this to more than three articles read a day by an average daily audience of 2.5 million uniques.

 

  • Greater depth: The significance of international tournament football to both die-hard and fair-weather fans is clear – their numbers swell and they read more – and our premium publishers respond with more in-depth build up, live match reports and detailed post-match analysis.

 

Complementary content

    • Ways to watch: Football fever drove engagement with electronics content. TV sets and home entertainment systems in particular saw a 4x increase in interest compared to a typical 15% dip normally seen in the summer.

 

    • Where to watch: With so much football on live TV, television content also saw higher interest than in previous years. Historically, we would have seen +10% increase in this period but Euro 2020 grew it by more than 30%.

 

  • Fuel the action: Food and drink content also scored highly across the tournament, particularly fast food and recipes, which saw a +47% and +18% increase respectively. From a full home-cooked spread to a delicious takeaway feast, football and food go hand in hand.

 

Take action

Whatever your campaign goals, be the brand to provide inspiration during the moments that matter throughout the tournament from the first kick to last cheer.

Ozone can create a bespoke solution to connect you to its football audience during this year’s World Cup, but here’s some insight-led activation ideas to get you started…

    • Be present: From the first match build up to the last cheer, connect with our football audience throughout the tournament. Upweight activity around home nations match days, as that’s when we see the most significant increases in fan engagement.

 

    • Manage frequency: We expect to see a swelling football audience engage with more and more of our premium publisher punditry as the tournament progresses. Frequency management will be key so think fewer, bigger, better.

 

    • Think audience: Competition for audience attention in a football context will be high to reach the die-hard fans. Consider targeting by audience rather than context, where competition will be lower and the fair-weather fans can be found.

 

  • Be seen: High impact formats, like our outstream video, skins, interscrollers and new stories creative treatment, are proven to attract attention. Deploying these will boost your campaign objectives.

 

All of this insight is captured in our latest report: On top of the World Cup 2022 with Ozone. Download it here or contact [email protected] to speak to a member of the Ozone team.

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