Going for Gold: Olympic fever hits Britain

Going for Gold: Olympic fever hits Britain

Team GB website sees 150 percent increase in traffic

BBC Sport 5^th most visited UK website

London, 30th July 2012 – After the tremendous opening ceremony, the Olympic Games are now well and truly under way as the nation pulls together to support Team GB. According to the latest analysis from Experian , website visits to the official Team GB site increased by 150 per cent in the last week.  Additionally, Team GB’s Facebook fan page is one of the fastest growing Olympic-related pages with total ‘likes’ increasing by 14 per cent and 27 percent of fans engaging with the page over the course of the last month.

Anticipation of Danny Boyle’s Olympic opening extravaganza sparked an 86 per cent increase in searches for the ceremony in the build up to the show.  Further analysis reveals that nine per cent of all consumers searching for the opening ceremony went direct to Facebook, making it the main beneficiary of all the searches, ahead of the official London 2012 website (eight per cent) and YouTube (six per cent). Meanwhile the words “Olympic tickets” and “Olympic opening ceremony” became the 56th and 67th most searched for terms in the UK last week.

Further digital analysis of the Olympic Games has revealed:

• Interest in Olympic tickets is still high even at this late stage with nearly a quarter of visitors to the official London 2012 site heading to the ticketing site immediately after their visit.
• The most searched for Olympic ticketed events are football and tennis.
• The biggest Team GB supporters are in the Midlands, where internet users are 23 per cent more likely than the average consumer to visit the site with residents in Northampton being 64 per cent more likely to visit the site compared to the overall UK population.

BBC Sport has also benefited from Olympic fever making it the fifth most visited UK site over the weekend, overtaking all other BBC properties with average session times increasing from seven to ten minutes as people watch their favourite events on the site.

James Murray, Digital Insight Manager for Experian Marketing Services, commented: “Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony has captured the heart of the nation making it one of the most searched items in the UK last week. Billed as the first digital Olympics, this is evident as consumers flock online to share this once in a lifetime experience within their digital communities. Savvy marketers would do well in harnessing these digital channels effectively to drive higher engagement levels for their campaigns.

For up to date online analysis for London 2012, please contact Alexandra Banks 07966 102823 or Stephanie Dobson 07966 847821.

ENDS

Contact:
Alexandra Banks
Digital PR Manager, Experian Marketing Services
+44 (0) 7966102823
alexandra.banks@uk.experian.com
press.uk@hitwise.com

About Experian Marketing Services
Experian Marketing Services delivers best-in-breed customer data and insight, digital-marketing technologies and data management services into multiple regions around the globe. By helping marketers more effectively target and engage their best customers with meaningful communications across both traditional and digital media, Experian Marketing Services enables organisations to encourage brand advocacy while creating measurable return on marketing investment.

For more information, visit http://www.experian.co.uk/business-services/marketing-services.html