Beijing Olympics - Who's Capitalizing on the online Games?

Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific

August 09, 2008

Beijing Olympics - Who's Capitalizing on the online Games?

There is no doubt that the Olympics represents a major online media opportunity. As this article in ZDNet Asia points out, search engines have been geared up to distribute the heightened sports-related terms within their respective advertising networks. My colleague, Alan Long has written about the traction of consumer interest in the Olympics across global markets. I'll focus on paid search activity for the Games in Australia.

Our Hitwise Search data demonstrates that 'bejing olympics' sent the most clicks to the Sports – Olympics category, accounting for 6.32% volume, with a 'paid rate' of 1.24% for the 4 weeks ending 2 August, 2008*.

It's interesting to note that other leading terms to the Olympics category in the top 30, such as 'beijing olympics mascots' and 'australian olympians' attracted significantly higher paid rates of 8.59% and 10.12% respectively, indicating where advertisers are seeking out niche search opportunities.

Live and Yahoo! Search Australia - Strong Paid Rates

In a Hitwise Search Portfolio of 100 leading search variations on 'olympics', Google Australia was by far the dominant search engine distributing 75.67% of clicks, with a paid rate of 2.24% for the 4 weeks ending 2 August 2008. Live and Yahoo! Search Australia sent lower overall volumes of clicks, but sent higher rates of paid traffic; 10.3% and 8% respectively.

Yahoo!7 Sport, ninemsn, Telstra and SMH - Leveraging PPC

A Hitwise Search Intelligence report indicates that the official Beijing 2008 (English language) site was the main beneficiary of downstream traffic from Olympic searches, receiving more than 1 in 4 clicks, for the 4 weeks ending 2 August, 2008. Yahoo!7 Sport, ninemsn, Telstra and SMH all received paid traffic off Olympic search terms to their respective websites, with paid rates widely ranging between 3% and 66%. As the games progress, it'll be interesting to see if media players adapt their paid search campaigns to correspond with the success of Australian athletes or otherwise.

Korea Tourism Organization - Seeking to benefit from Olympic Travel

Sports and News and Media industries as you'd expect received significant volumes of clicks from Olympic searches. Interesting to note that Education – Reference was also up there, receiving 6.82% of clicks (driven primarily to Wikipedia). The Travel industry had high rates of paid search traffic off Olympics searches, with the Korea Tourism Organization website aggressively leveraging PPC for Australian interest in the Games.

NBC Olympics: We Don't Care If You Hate Us, You're Watching USA-China Basketball On Tape Delay

Henry Blodget

NBC actually showed Michael Phelps live on the east coast last night as he shattered his own world record in the 400 IM. We watched--and, suddenly, the Olympics were as awesome as, well, the Olympics. If you live on the west coast, of course, thanks to another absurd decision by NBC, you only got to watch the race after reading about Phelps' victory online, when it was about as exciting as 1970s Superbowls.

(And as if this weren't enough, NBC is doing the same thing this morning, with USA-China basketball).

Why is NBC making decisions guaranteed to alienate and outrage much of the country? Money, of course. The network apparently believes it stands a better chance of earning back its $894 milllion plus programming costs if it infuriates viewers across the country.

And maybe the network is right. But it's still a dumb decision...

August 8, 2008,  12:07 am

Brush Up on the Mandarin for ‘Table Tennis’ and ‘Triathlon’

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Ken Carroll, who runs the popular Chinese-lesson podcast ChinesePod, is taking advantage of the world’s sudden need to know how to say “gold medal,” “100-meter backstroke” or “Where is the basketball arena?” in Mandarin, the official language of China. He has started ChinesePod-Olympics, a specialized version of his popular podcast...

Mr. Carroll started ChinesePod in 2005. Today, it has 200,000 regular users and 300,000 monthly visitors who come to learn Mandarin vocabulary, tones and characters along with tips on how to deal with Chinese telemarketers, politely greet elders or get a new phone number upon arrival in the country. Some users listen to the lessons on the go in China, whipping out their iPod in a taxi for the tutorial on how to interact with a cab driver.