FIFA World Cup and the big web switch off

We are officially a nation of work shy football fanatic!

New findings reveal that traffic figures for English websites are dropping by up to 20 percent during the countries fixtures in the FIFA World Cup tournament.

AOL Advertising’s ADTECH analysed the delivery performance of its adservers on selected English websites during the first two games.

It goes to show that English football viewers still prefer to cheer their teams through matches in front of their televisions or at public viewings than across the Internet. And it’s expected that traffic will drop further during today’s game and intensify if the English team continues in the tournament.

When other national squads chase the ball, not unexpectedly traffic figures among English websites drop by less than expected.

“Websites have hardly benefited at all from the actual games, in contrast to gains they saw from reporting before and after the matches when they were able to score points with the fast availability of online information,” says UK & Ireland Country Manager, ADTECH, Ken Parnahm.

Even an hour before the whistle kicked off English matches, visitor numbers to websites dropped by ten per cent. Once the ball got rolling, the ADTECH adservers recorded just 80 percent of their usual ad impressions.

For the today’s game against Slovenia, Parnham is expecting a decline in delivery performance of up to 30 percent, similar to the delivery experience during the 2008 European Championships in Austria and Switzerland.

As soon as the English matches are over, delivery performance for banner ads rises by up to ten per cent above normal traffic for the time of day during the first 60 minutes after the final whistle.