PRESS RELEASE

ADTECH Survey: FIFA World Cup Impacts Web Reach

Online publishers forced to explain declines in web traffic find excuse: it is all football's fault!

London, UK – 23rd June 2010 - ADTECH, the international provider of adserving solutions, and part of AOL Advertising, has today revealed in a survey that traffic figures for English websites are dropping by up to 20 percent during the countries fixtures in the FIFA World Cup tournament. ADTECH analysed the delivery performance of its adservers on selected English websites during the first two games.

Banner figures underline the fact 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. It is 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, traffic figures among English websites drop by less than expected.

For Ken Parnahm, UK & Ireland Country Manager, ADTECH, the numbers lead to only one conclusion: “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.”

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.