Fantasy Sports League Online Advertising ... - WhatRunsWhere

WhatRunsWhere Insights & Analysis:

Fantasy Sports League Online Advertising Landscape

WhatRunsWhere Insights & Analysis: Fantasy Sports League Online Advertising Landscape Executive Summary

01

Introduction

01

Desktop

02 - 07

Share of Voice Publishers & Categories Channel Mix Top Performing Ads

03 - 04

Mobile Share of Voice Publishers & Categories Channel Mix Top Performing Ads Devices Breakdown

08 - 13

Conclusion

04 05 06 - 07

08 08 - 09 09 - 10 11 - 12 12 - 13 13

©WhatRunsWhere, 2014 Information and graphs contained in this report are copyright and the property of WhatRunsWhere™. The reproduction or transmission of this report, in full or in part, and in any form or by any means is not permitted without the written express consent of WhatRunsWhere. Although care has been taken in the making of this report to ensure the accuracy, completeness and reliability of the content, WhatRunsWhere assumes no responsibility in respect of errors, omissions, and generalisations. Under no circumstances will WhatRunsWhere be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential losses due to the consequences of use of such information.

Executive Summary This report intends to explore the online advertising landscape of the Fantasy Sports League niche, particularly fantasy football. It will review and compare the advertising campaigns of four key advertisers in the industry and present a comprehensive report regarding their display media buying strategies on desktop and mobile-web.

The research draws attention to the following: Advertisers in this market often utilise publishers that can be classified as ‘Sports’ or ‘News to drive potential users who are already interested in sports to their landing pages and websites Advertisers prefer the use of ad networks, in particular the Google Display Network (GDN) on desktop; however, on mobile direct media buys comprise 50% of all placement methodologies Diverse creatives placed in high volume on relevant publishers and through ad networks on desktop while through direct buys on mobile will likely lead to larger Share of Voice

Recommendation: The key components of a media buying strategy in the Fantasy Sports League market include: 1) employing a diverse array of creatives in high volume 2) through ad networks, especially GDN (on desktop) and 3) on publishers that can be classified as ‘Sports’.

Introduction When fall comes around, it signifies the return of many wonderful things including more pumpkin spice lattes, trips to the apple orchard and crackling warm fires. But most of all, it marks the beginning of a brand new football season. For Fantasy Football fans this means getting your game face on fast, finding the right league to join and, of course, getting first pick to draft the ultimate team. As the excitement unfolds, domains that host fantasy leagues are also launching their online media buying campaigns. But with so many domains placing ads, how can competitors in the fantasy sports niche complete? In an effort to better understand how these sites are marketing themselves online, WhatRunsWhere has investigated the advertising performances of four major websites: fanduel.com (Fan Duel), cbssports.com (CBS – discussed only on desktop), games.espn.go.com (ESPN), draftkings.com (Draft Kings), and football.fantasysports.yahoo.com (Yahoo – discussed only on mobile).

WhatRunsWhere Insights & Analysis: Fantasy Sports League Online Advertising Landscape

01

Desktop Having collected data spanning 180 days of activity up until September 22nd, 2014 in the United States, we have successfully tracked 400 unique ads on over 4,900 publishers across desktop, mobile and in-app platforms (Figure 4). Overall advertisers employed more banner ads (322) than text ads (78), a difference of 77.6% indicating image based ads are more important to visually stimulate and attract clicks (Figure 1, Figure 2). CBS placed the largest number of creatives (95) followed by Draft Kings and Fan Duel which both employed the same number creatives (89), and finally ESPN (58) (Figure 3). Although over the past 180 day period Draft Kings placed 84 total banner ads, within the first 90 days of this period they reduced this number to 67 unique creatives (Figure 4). After another 60 days this was trimmed to 48. Within the past 14 days only 27 unique creatives placed by Draft Kings were seen, 34% less than Fan Duel in same period. Draft Kings thus narrowed the number of creatives it utilised by 68%. All other advertisers also reduced the number of unique creatives they employed in the past 180 days: Fan Duel trimmed its creatives by 47%, CBS Sports by 78% and ESPN by 100%.

Total Creatives Breakdown (Fig. 1) 60

262

9

69

··

Creatives Percentile Breakdown (Fig. 2)

Desktop Mobile

··

21%

Banner Ads Text/Hybrid

79%

Banner

Text/Hybrid

Creatives Breakdown by Advertiser (Fig. 3) 5 84

59

36

41 17 78

·· ··

Fan Duel ESPN CBS Sports Draft Kings

11

Banner

Text/Hybrid


02

Total Publishers Tracked (Fig. 4)

··

590


4381

Total Creatives Breakdown (Fig. 5) 100

Fan Duel ESPN CBS Sports Drafts Kings

80 60 40 20 0

180 Days

90 Days

60 Days

30 Days

14 Days

7 Days

Share of Voice Share of Voice (SOV) is a value given to each company derived from its presence across its industry specific competitive display advertising landscape. The higher the Share of Voice value, the "louder" the advertiser's "voice" is among competitors in the same industry, as determined by the parameters of the report. Among the four advertisers examined in this study, research reveals that CBS sports possesses the largest SOV (55%), followed by Draft Kings (19%), then ESPN (18%) and finally Fan Duel (8%) (Figure 6). While it can be posited that CBS has a large SOV due to the high volume of creatives it has utilised, this hypothesis does not hold when we consider Fan Duel’s strategy. After all Fan Duel placed a similarly large number of creatives, yet only has a SOV of 8%.Thus possession of a large SOV is a combination of multiple factors including, but not limited to, employment of a high volume of unique creatives.


03

Desktop SOV (Fig. 6) 8% 19%

55%

18%

·· ··


Publishers & Categories As previously mentioned, it is possible that CBS was successful at rapidly reaching a wide audience using a volume-based tactic for ad placements, but this does not necessarily mean successful conversion. This point is underscored by the fact that Fan Duel placed a similar number of creatives but trailed in last place SOV possession among the advertisers examined in this study. Therefore other factors including the placement of ads on top publishers within their respective market niche should also be considered for a successful campaign. Figure 6 displays the top ten categories (or market niches) of the publishers on which the four competitors examined placed their ads. Understanding that the advertisers’ market niche is sports or entertainment related, correspondingly the number one publisher category is ‘Sports – Other’ (Figure 7).

Top Ten Categories of Publishers* (Fig. 7)

5% 6% 8% 72%

Sports - Other Personal Pages & Blogs News, Portal & Search Streaming & Downloadable Video Community Forums

Entertainment - Other Music Games Food & Drink - Other Martial Arts

*Top ten categories of publishers among the four examined in this industry.


04

Channel Mix Analysis of these advertisers’ channel mix determines that their desktop display media buying strategies favour the use of ad networks over direct buys: 84% of ads were placed through networks and only 16% through direct buys (Figure 7). The overwhelming majority of network placements (79%) were made through the GDN while 3% was completed through Adsonar and 2% through Advertising.com (Figure 10). When we compare the channel mix breakdown of these advertisers with their desktop SOV sizes, it becomes clear that Fan Duel’s overuse of direct media buys may not be resulting in success considering their comparatively small SOV size of 8% (Figure 9). For Draft King, however, majority use of direct buys with a comparatively high volume of unique creatives placed does work. The likeliest reason for this contradiction may lie with the category of the publishers they advertisers are placing on.

Channel Mix (Fig. 8)

··

16%

Channel Mix Breakdown (Fig. 9) Ad Network Direct Buy

42.59% 57.39% 99.33%

99.98%

84%

57.4%

·· ··


42.6%

Ad Network Direct Buy

How did they place it?

·· ··

Draft Kings: 42.59% ad network vs. 57.39% direct buy CBS Sports: 100% ad network ESPN: 100% ad network Fan Duel: 42.6 ad network vs. 57.4% direct buy

Display Placement Breakdown (Fig. 10) 3% 2%

16% 79%

·· ·· ·

Google Adwords Media Buy Quigo Adsonar Advertising.com Other


05

Top Performing Ads The following is a selection of top performing desktop ads placed in the United States by the aforementioned industry leaders.


06

What do these top creative have in common? Images: Advertiser logo clearly located centrally or in the corners of the ad Simple background that is related to a sport (baseball field, chalkboard etc). Text: Large and graphic A lot of text and information provided succinctly Contrasting and eye catching colours Use of white font is common Interactive CTA button in contrasting colour


07

Mobile Share of Voice On the mobile-web space the SOV breakdown is quite different from desktop. Here, there is a significant lack of data for CBS resulting in its exclusion from comparison on mobile. Yahoo was therefore chosen for comparative purposes on mobile in its stead. Overall, advertisers employed more banner ads (87%) than text or hybrid ads (13%) (Figure 13). ESPN placed 38 total creatives of which 30 were banners and the remaining was text (Figure 12). Draft Kings placed the second highest volume of unique creatives (19 banners, 1 text) while Fan Duel and then Yahoo placed the fewest (5 and 6 banner ads, respectively). On Mobile, ESPN is the SOV leader (39%), followed closely by Draft Kings (35%), then Fan Duel (18%) and finally Yahoo (8%) (Figure 11).

Mobile SOV (Fig. 11)

·· ··

8% 18% 35% 39%

Creatives Percentile Breakdown (Fig. 12) Fan Duel ESPN Draft Kings Yahoo

··

13%


87%

Creatives Breakdown by Advertiser (Fig. 13) 6

1

19

8 30

·· ··

Fan Duel ESPN Draft Kings Yahoo

5

Banner

Text/Hybrid

Publishers & Categories A similar pattern is found on mobile with regards to the categories of the top ten publishers on which the advertisers examined in this study have chosen to advertise on: publishers are typically ‘Sports – Other’ (36%).


08

‘News, Portal & Search – Other’ was the next top publisher category (18%), followed by ‘Personal Pages & Blogs’ (15%) and then, interestingly ‘Fashion – Other’ (13%) (Figure 14*).

Top Ten Categories of Publishers - Mobile* (Fig. 14) Sports - Other News, Portal & Search Personal Pages & Blog Fashion - Other Music

5% 36% 13%

15%

Streaming & Downloadable Video Food & Drink - Other Games Coupons Entertainment News & Celebrity Sites

*Top ten categories of publishers among the four examined in this industry.

18%

Channel Mix On mobile, the channel mix breakdowns of the major advertisers in this niche were much more diverse than on desktop. Within the 180 day period of tracked data, ad placements were split 50/50 between ad networks and direct buys (Figure 16). Taking up 50% of all placements indicates that direct media buys on mobile is quite significant. Network placements were comprised of 30% DFP Mobile, 10% AdMob, 5% Quigo Adsonar, 3% Adwords and 2% AppLovin. Considering ESPN has the largest SOV (39%), it is possible that ad network placements are more effective than direct buys on mobile. Yet simultaneously, Draft Kings possesses the next largest SOV (35%) but placed the majority of its ads through direct buys (79.92%). That ESPN employed more unique creatives, and especially more text ads, could be a major contributing factor to its larger SOV.

Channel Mix (Fig. 15)

50%

50% 60%

··



09

Channel Mix Breakdown (Fig. 16) 48.8%

·· ··

51.2%

20.08% 79.92%

100% 96.69%



How did they place it?

·· ··

Draft Kings: 20.08% ad network vs. 72.92% direct buy Yahoo: 48.8% ad network vs. 51.2% direct buy ESPN: 100% ad network Fan Duel: 3.31% ad network vs. 96.69% direct buy

Mobile Placement Breakdown (Fig. 17) 2% 3% 5% 30% 50%

10%

·· ·· ·

Google Adwords Media Buy Quigo Adsonar Advertising.com Other


10

Top Performing Ads The following is a selection of top performing mobile ads placed in the United States by the aforementioned industry leaders.


11

What do these top creative have in common? Images: Logos is located in the foreground centrally or in corners, highly visible Use of images symbolically related to sports or to fantasy goals (money, baseball Use of a lot of green – associated with growth, money and activity Text: Large and graphic Invitations are to the point Contrasting and eye catching colours Lots of text and information but with clean lines Interactive Visible and accessible CTA button

Devices Breakdown The following shows the percentile breakdown of devices on which ads were placed on the mobile-web space. As this data is drawn predominantly from the android market, the presence of android devices is particularly prevalent in these figures.

Devices Breakdown (Fig. 18) 25%

23%

26%

26%

·· ··

iPhone iPad Android Tablet Android Phone


12

Devices Breakdown by Advertiser (Fig. 19) 11.63%

9.3%

24.14%

50.34%

23.21%

19.39%

11.63% 67.44%

25.52%

26.28% 31.12%

30%

40%

20%

·· ··


10%

iPhone

iPad

Android Tablet

Android Phone

Conclusion The online advertising landscape for advertisers of fantasy sports leagues is evidently a competitive field that encompasses both the desktop display and mobile web platforms. Among the four advertisers explored in this study, research reveals that CBS sports possessed the largest SOV (55%), followed by Draft Kings (19%), then ESPN (18%) and finally Fan Duel (8%) on desktop (Figure 6). On mobile, CBS sports had little to no data available on the android market; however, ESPN was found to be the SOV leader (39%), followed closely by Draft Kings (35%), Fan Duel (18%) and finally Yahoo (8%) (Figure 11). Note however that CBS' advertising content is not limited to just Fantasy Sports Leagues, which is the case for Fan Duel and Draft King, although in the time frame examined there was a large volume of niche-specific ads. With regards to these advertisers’ channel mixes, their desktop display media buying strategies prefer ad networks over direct buys, the majority of which were completed through the GDN. On mobile, a more diverse media buying strategy existed with 50% of all placements made through direct buys. While it can be postulated that CBS had a large SOV on desktop due to the high volume of creatives it utilised, this assumption is not necessarily correct. After all Fan Duel placed a similarly large number of creatives, but only had a SOV of 8%. Thus possession of a large SOV is a combination of multiple factors including, but not limited to, employment of high volume unique creatives. We can therefore conclude that 1) employing a diverse array of creatives in high volume 2) through ad networks, and 3) on publishers that can be classified as ‘sports’ are key components of the media buying strategy of advertisers in the online fantasy sports league market, at least this is the case for desktop. On mobile, a similar formula can be employed but with greater emphasis on direct media buys which may lead to larger SOVs and, from there, wider audience reach.


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