How LiveScore Bet used the 2022 FIFA World Cup to drive clicks and leads via contextual ads

Across a four week period ranging either side of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, SmartFrame was able to use its image-streaming and contextual-ad-serving technology to raise awareness of LiveScore Bet’s brand, driving traffic to its website and achieving a fill rate of 80% (the percentage of the overall ads ‘getting served’ out of the total number of ‘ad calls’ being requested on site/page).

The challenge:

Part of LiveScore’s pool of companies, LiveScore Bet bills itself as one of the UK’s leading sports betting providers. It wanted to capitalise on the World Cup’s broad range of viewers to increase its global awareness and use the tournament’s popularity to drive a more varied audience of sports fans to its website.

Sports-betting has become big business, with a global market currently valued at $84bn with some experts predicting it will grow to over $280bn by 2032. LiveScore Bet partnered with SmartFrame to use its global image-streaming network in the hopes of achieving maximum visibility for its website during the 2022 FIFA World Cup period.

The solution:

To achieve this, SmartFrame delivered high-quality interactive images with contextually targeted ads aimed at increasing users’ interaction with the LiveScore Bet brand.

Prioritising the most prominent positions on a webpage for maximum visibility, relevant sporting images were added across a range of fan sites serving audiences from different countries. LiveScore Bet was able to expose viewers to a range of striking, high-impact ads across the full dimensions of an image, encouraging interaction and driving traffic to its website.

Independent photo agency IMAGO provided Planet Sport with over 2,500 images for the campaign. The interactive elements of the images included full-screen viewing, Hyper Zoom control and sharing options. These were embedded within eight premium football sites and four creatives from LiveScore were developed as ads to be served inside the images.

Over the four week period, the creatives were targeted towards football fans aged 18 and over who engaged with content relating to the World Cup on the chosen eight websites.

The results:

Running before, during and after the World Cup, the campaign exceeded expectations, with key results including:

- A fill rate of 80%, which is above the industry average.

- 3,249 unique engagements with images, demonstrating the extent to which users connected with the creatives.

- 2,205 Hyper Zoom clicks and 1,151 share button clicks highlighting the benefits of incorporating interactive imagery.

For advertisers planning on entering a new digital era, the results underline the power of a model that combines image streaming with in-image advertising.

Rob Sewell, CEO at SmartFrame Technologies, said: “This is a great result for our client and is testament to what we are trying to achieve as a business, driving better audience engagement and creating opportunities to develop new revenues, all in a fair and sustainable way.”