THE PREROLL FOOTBALL MATCH

Short List
TitleTHE PREROLL FOOTBALL MATCH
BrandTELENET
Product/ServicePLAY SPORTS
Category C02. Innovative Online Ad Solution
Entrant TBWA\BELGIUM Brussels, BELGIUM
Idea Creation TBWA\BELGIUM Brussels, BELGIUM
Media Placement PHD MEDIA Brussels, BELGIUM
Production TBWA\BELGIUM Brussels, BELGIUM
Credits
Name Company Position
Greg van Buggenhout TBWA Art Director
Olaf Meuleman TBWA Copywriter
Jeroen Bostoen TBWA Creative Director
Gert Pauwels TBWA Head of Digital
Max Fauconnier TBWA Account Executive
Tom Eilers TBWA Account Manager
Jochen De Greef TBWA Client Service Director
Joachim Francois TBWA Digital Account Director
Virginie Hayet TBWA Account Manager
Diedrik Van Remoortere TBWA web developer
Ken Kools TBWA Digital Process Manager
Stijn Dupas TBWA Digital Process Manager
Lieselotte Van Aperen TBWA Communications Manager
Manu Leroy Telenet Director Sports Product, Sponsoring & G2Market
Wouter Vandenameele PHD Media Digital Strategy Director
Christine Brone PHD Media Managing Director

The Campaign

You skip ads all the time. But would you skip a live football match? Pre-rolls are annoying. And we all try to skip them as soon as possible. But what if we make a preroll people actually wànt to see? So much, they would even switch off their ad-blockers? During the Supercup, Play Sports decided to replace all their pre-roll ads with the live broadcast of the game. A technical challenge with a real time connection between the stadium, the live broadcast and the pre-roll ad server. But it worked, so instead of a boring ad, people could see the game. And as long as they didn’t skip it, they could keep watching. And guess what… Fans didn’t skip. The idea spread like wildfire, which lead to 145.484 people watching the game.

Creative Execution

It had never been done before, which implied a lot of technical difficulties. We partnered up with a big Belgian media group that owns a lot of big news sites where they offer media space in pre-rolls. To pull this off we had to create a real time connection between the stadium, the live broadcast, the pre roll ad server and media buyer. Needless to say, this was a huge technical challenge that took months. On media point of view, this was also quite a challenge: during specific 90 minutes, on a big part of the Flemish news sites, our live pre-roll ad was playing. Our SOV was 100% in those 90 minutes, with a massive return in instant reach.

The pre-roll football match was viewed by 145.484 people in only 90 minutes, on different Flemish news sites. Given the 100% SOV in this peak period in the evening, on over 10 big news sites, this pre-roll created a lot of reach in a short timeframe. And although this was a skippable ad, the average viewtime of our pre-roll was 21,5 minutes. Compared to a average 15” viewtime benchmark. These 145.484 people was on top of the 21.500 football fans in the Anderlecht stadium, and the 112.054 people on the Play Sports channel that watched the game. Not bad for a Belgian football game. Plus, that same weekend the subscriptions on Play Sports were up with 417% compared to last year’s opening weekend.

Play Sports has the biggest live sports offer in Belgium. And because of that, they are always right where the action happens, so fans don’t have to miss a thing. This lead to a campaign where we triggered consumers for the upcoming season by saying: ‘don’t miss a second of the next season’. We highlighted several crucial seconds that made a huge impact during the last season. We searched our consumers online, on specific news sites. Since a lot of fans search online where they can see the match, we were in the right place to target them. And by offering the Supercup for free to the public, people didn’t have to miss a second of the game. At the end we communicated to the viewers that with Play Sports, they don’t have to miss a second of every other game in the upcoming season.