You know the score. Every click, view, and engagement is a potential source of income. Sporting events provide a goldmine for publishers looking to monetize their traffic. You can really capitalize on the passion, loyalty, and sheer numbers associated with these highly-popular events. By understanding how to turn this traffic into profit, you can open up a whole new world of opportunities, creating a win-win situation for sports lovers and business-savvy individuals alike.
Sporting events naturally attract a diverse and enthusiastic audience, characterized by fervor, loyalty, and consistent engagement. This unique demographic of sport fans behave a certain way online. A phenomenon termed ‘bursty behavior’ is often observed, characterized by substantial traffic spikes during live events, announcements, or championship games.
These users demonstrate high levels of session duration and engagement rate, reflecting their intense interest and involvement in the sporting world. You should expect a lot of commenting, sharing, and other forms of user-generated content. Sporting event traffic can come from anywhere, so make sure you’re ready for any country tier.
Important Sporting Events – August 2023
2023 World Athletics Championships: August 19, 2023 – August 27, 2023
The biggest event in Hungary’s history. More than 2,000 athletes from over 200 countries will come to Hungary for 9 days to compete in the brand new, National Athletics Centre.
World Beach Games in Bali – 5-12 August 2023
This event includes aquathlon, beach handball, kata, beach soccer, beach tennis, beach volleyball, beach water polo and more.
US Open 2023
The US Open is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments. As a high-stakes international event, it draws a diverse online audience. These viewers span all age groups, but data shows a concentration in the 25-54 demographic, both male and female, reflecting a mature and relatively affluent audience. This audience is globally dispersed, bringing together fans from different cultures and backgrounds.
In the period before the event and during the sporting event itself, there’s a lot of online traffic: users are looking for free ways to watch online, for example, which is why it’s a great time to place ads on these kinds of sites.
Social media platforms like Twitter and Reddit get a lot of traffic, as users discuss the sporting event. Certain Telegram groups and channels, specifically those related to betting, may also get a lot of traffic.
Betting websites and apps, and fantasy sports platforms also gain significant attention as fans set up their teams based on real players.
Other websites that may see a traffic peak include sports blogs and fan sites, travel websites, ticket selling platforms and even health and fitness sites.
How to monetize high-volume sporting events?
Since there’s a lot of traffic when there’s an important game or event, you want to be ready for that and place your ads and other monetizing tools accordingly.
For example, you can place ads on the direct-view button of the video, in order to make the user click and perform a task before they can watch the content. Don’t try sending too many ads to the users, or they’ll get annoyed and go somewhere else. Also, too many clicks per user are considered irregular activity by AdMaven and may cause an account suspension, so do be careful.
The best ad types for sporting streaming sites are pop ads, push notifications, interstitial ads and content locker.
Here’s the best-case usage for each:
Pop-unders appear in a new browser window hidden under the active window. Unlike pop-ups, which appear over the top of the browser window, pop-unders do not interrupt the user’s immediate view, as they stay ‘under’ the current window and become visible only once the user closes or minimizes the current window.
Pop-unders are a great tool for certain offers, such as VPN. When there’s an international sporting event, a lot of users want to watch online, but can only do so via VPN, since the viewing is limited by location. If you have a good VPN offer, synchronize it with the appropriate sporting event. Other recommended pop-unders offers are sporting bets, dating apps, content arbitrage and e-commerce.
Advertisers are willing to pay extra to display their ads as pop during sporting events, so when you use pop-unders in your website during an event, you’ll earn more.
Interstitial ads: a sports fan doesn’t want to be interrupted during the game, but you can certainly use interstitial ads before the game or during breaks, without a countdown. This can get the maximal effect of the ad. Interstitials are highly visible and they cover the content, so they usually get a lot of clicks and interaction.
Push Notifications: one of the most efficient ads around. Web push notifications CTR can vary between 15% up to 30%. Push notification opening rate is 50% higher than that of a newsletter, for example, so it’s a great tool for monetizing.
One of the biggest advantages of push ads, is the fact it marks the users and helps the ad system learn about them. This makes remarketing easier and a great ad choice for long term digital marketing.
Content locker: sports fans are eager to watch the event or see information about it, so you can easily use a content locker to monetize their passion. You can publish links on social media and Telegram, and even in a newsletter.
Sporting events monetizing tips and tricks
Know the country: different events attract fans from different parts of the world. A rugby game doesn’t have the same audience of a tennis game or an athletic championship. Understand the country, the sport and the audience in order to optimize your earnings.
AdMaven recommends choosing pop ads, because they represent the most profitable model, along with a captive audience (sport fans are enthusiastic and will do almost anything to watch an event
Pop ads and lightbox are your strongest tools. We know how expensive it is to maintain a streaming service, so you need the best ad types in order to keep the revenue coming.