Display ad campaign for National Lottery EuroMillions nets Camelot more new online visitors in one month than any other company - including Facebook - achieved over the last year.
UKOM (The UK Online Measurement company powered by Nielsen) today reveals that the Camelot Group, parent company of the National Lottery, was the fastest growing company online in the UK over the last year, in terms of the increase in numbers of monthly visitors.
Between July 2009 and July 2010, the number of Britons visiting Camelot websites increased by 4.4 million to 9.4 million. This growth was boosted by a large-scale online display ad campaign run in July 2010 for the National Lottery EuroMillions draw which ran heavily on sites like eBay, Amazon and Gumtree. The July campaign caused the audience to the EuroMillions site to jump by 4.1 million in that month alone.
The campaign resulted in more new visitors in one month than the 3.8 million extra visitors social network Facebook experienced across the entire year, the second-fastest growing company online (see Chart 1). Facebook now attracts 25.1 million British visitors, making it the third most visited company online behind Google and Microsoft (see chart 2).
The third fastest-growing company online was Demand Media, courtesy of its social knowledge property eHow - where people share solutions to various problems - which helped the audience to Demand Media’s properties increase by 1.9 million to 3.6 million visitors.
Following Demand Media is the Carphone Warehouse Group, which attracted nearly 1.5 million more online British visitors than at the same point last year - largely due to its TalkTalk website for home phone and broadband packages.
Adding to Facebook and eHow, the social media theme continues with social network game developer Zynga (the fifth fastest grower), and the Wikimedia Foundation (6th). Zynga, which develops browser-based games that work as widgets on sites like Facebook, added 1.4 million new British visitors over the last year. Social information site Wikipedia helped push the audience of parent company, the Wikimedia Foundation, up by 1.4 million between July 2009 and July 2010.
The environmental movement is represented in the top ten fastest growers by an energy company – EDF. EDF Energy web properties experienced a 1.2 million increase in visitor numbers, primarily down to Team Green Britain, a brand created by EDF as a resource to help those wanting to reduce their carbon footprint. The site builds on EDF’s status as the official sustainability partner of the London 2012 Olympic Games.
PartyGaming follows next, another company representing the gambling sector alongside Camelot. PartyGaming’s extra 1.2 million visitors were primarily due to its PartyPoker and PartyCasino websites.
Search also features in the list, twice. Peeplo, a search engine that promotes its ability to find quality content on publishers’ sites and prominent blogs, grew by 1.2 million visitors. Google, the UK’s most visited company online, continued to experience good growth - 1.0 million new visitors – helped by Google Maps and Google Image Search.
UKOM general manager James Smythe explains the results: “Better internet accessibility and more new social applications for the internet seem to be the long-term drivers behind these growth sites, but Camelot’s performance illustrates how good online display advertising can also influence behaviour dramatically.
“Camelot’s campaign was successful because it had a concise and compelling story – become a multi-millionaire this Friday – a strong “play now” call to action and was predominantly carried on sites where consumers are in a buying frame of mind, such as Amazon and eBay.
“Three of the ten fastest-growing companies represent traditional offline brands – Camelot, Carphone Warehouse and EDF. I expect these will act as case studies for how such brands can capture customers' attention online as well as offline.”
Chart 1: Fastest-growing companies online by increase in unique UK audience numbers, July 2009 - July 2010
Source: UKOM/Nielsen
E.g. the number of Unique UK individuals that visited a Camelot Group web property from home and work locations increased by 4.4 million (88%) between July 2009 and July 2010
Chart 2: Most popular companies online by unique UK audience numbers - July 2010
Source: UKOM/Nielsen
E.g. 34.5 million Unique UK individuals visited a Google web property from home and work locations in July 2010 - 1.0 million (3%) more than did so in July 2009
