Virgin Media To Launch Online Football Ad Campaign

Virgin Media is to launch an online ad campaign to promote the football highlights package on its web portal.

The campaign will mark the first time that clips of Premier League football have been used in online advertising.

Users will be able to click through to a landing page where they can view highlights or find out about Virgin Media’s football bundle offers.

Virgin Media’s football site offers clips from every Premier league, Coca-Cola Championship and League 1 and 2 match.

The clips are available on-demand for one week after transmission, with the site available to everyone with access to the internet, not just Virgin Media customers (see Virgin Launches Online Sports Portal).

Created by digital agency Start, the campaign will run throughout August, featuring on the football sections of newspaper websites the Sun, the Telegraph, Times, Mirror and Guardian.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) recently banned a Virgin Media ad campaign which compared its services to Sky’s.

The ASA upheld the complaints from Sky over Virgin Media’s “The real deal” campaign, saying that the ads were misleading (see Virgin Media Ad Campaign Banned)

Earlier this month, Virgin Media revealed that it lost 70,300 subscribers across its four cable and mobile services in the three months to the end of June (see Virgin Media Loses 70,300 Subscribers In Q2).

The cable operator admitted that the removal of Sky’s basic channels in March resulted in it losing 40,000 customers (see Virgin Media And Sky: The Story So Far).

Virgin Media: www.virginmedia.com