Over the past year, we have been working on delivering local-specific search experiences to the Australian audience. One such initiative is the Australian Football League (AFL) predictions feature, which utilises both Bing prediction data and user trends from social media platforms. The basis of AFL Bing predictions is that it analyses years of statistics from player and team performance, to other influential parameters such as venue and weather.
Whether you’re a casual AFL follower, a general sports fan or a lifetime AFL supporter, Bing has you covered for each round, including the finals series, providing team schedules and specific match information.
Search for AFL or your favourite team and find out who Bing predicts will win in upcoming matches.
Bing found that the 2015 AFL season received an overall increase of almost 5% in AFL related search clicks compared to 2014 (comparing mid-AFL season statistics in August 2014 vs August 2015). This resulted in increased direct traffic to various AFL-related domains spanning retail, ticketing and also betting segments.
The following highlights the changes in the top five Bing search engine result page (SERP) web results from August 2014 vs August 2015:
- 1st web result answer received an increase of 1.2% clicks
- 2nd web result answer saw growth of 28.9% clicks
- 3rd web result answer increased by 18.2% clicks
On the contrast:
- 4th web result answer fell by 4% in the number of clicks
- 5th web result answer declined by 36.4% in the number of clicks
The above is a by-product of Bing’s commitment to provide a high quality search platform for users by displaying the most relevant answers in top web results.
Following the expected trend, keywords surrounding AFL were trending on a linear fashion during the period of December 2014 until an exponential growth period from the start of the new AFL season (February and April 2015). As seen below:
The below graph shows traffic by geographical location (state level):
Recommendations for advertisers:
- Bid modifiers:
- Geographical location: implement incremental bidding by geographical location. For example, increasing all bids for the Victoria audience would be recommended as 50% of traffic with AFL betting terms originates from Victoria
- Device: users are more likely to be searching on mobile and tablet devices on game day
- Budgets: increasing budgets at peak times (daily/monthly). For example, increasing budgets in the month of season launch and the finals period, particularly the grand final week, will allow you to serve the increase volume of traffic
- Ad copy: ensure ad copy is up-to-date around key season timings; season launch, finals series and grand final
- App extensions: can prove to be effective for advertisers to acquire new customers, and download the app directly from the ad
- Negative keyword list: make sure that your negative keyword lists are up-to-date to ensure your maximising performance and getting the most relevant queries
For more information, please view the AFL predictions infographic below:
