Case Study – WorldGaming – July 2017

We helped improve tournament registration rates from 0.8% to 27.4%

NBA 2K17

Summary

WorldGaming is a huge online gaming center that holds eSport competitions and tournaments for cash prizes.

Catalyst Advertising worked on a digital ad campaign to encourage more page views and ultimately more user registrations for two sports-based video game tournaments: FIFA17 and NBA2K17.

During this campaign, tournament registration rates increased from 0.8% to 27.4%.

NBA 2K17

Background

WorldGaming is an eSports tournament organizer that promotes and operates international tournaments both online and at live events. They are a world-leading proprietary platform that hosts free-to-enter and play-to-enter contests for competitive gamers of all skill levels.

WorldGaming also manages a blog site https://inside.worldgaming.com that provides news, tips and tricks to help gamers improve their skills for specific games, as well as links to the main site for registering for tournaments – a key source of tournament registrations.

When WorldGaming first approached Catalyst, they were looking to increase traffic to their blog site. Their primary goal was to acquire registrations through cross-linking over to the tournament pages. After analyzing traffic from both sites, Catalyst found there was a significant population that were already aware of eSport tournaments who did not frequent the blog site at all. Catalyst proposed to leverage this audience directly through multiple touch points in an effort to increase registration rates reducing the overall CPA.

The Strategy

Advertising campaigns were created to gain page views and registrations from the gaming audience, sending users directly to the tournament sign-up pages for each game (FIFA17 and NBA2K17). Our campaigns were isolated by game in order to track statistics on ad performance and user behavior separately, and then refined the ads and audiences based on the overall performance.

Fifa 2017
NBA 2K17

Channels Used:

  • Search ad campaigns for information and final touch point
  • Display campaigns for awareness building
  • Facebook ads to promote social awareness, engagement and viral reach

Campaigns were developped using specific messages for each advertising channel. For example, in search ads, when a gamer actively searched for a particular event, a clear call to action would be present to entice them to sign up for online tournaments. Banner ads and text ads in the Google Display Network were created for awareness and to encourage people to view the tournament pages – an essential visual tool to capture their interest. Facebook ads were created both to remind users that these video gaming tournaments are accessible, to keep WorldGaming top of mind when they are ready to sign up and to promote viral awareness.

Facebook Targeting:

  • Selected target demographics (age and sex) in the USA and Canada with relevant interests in FIFA & NBA video games.

Display Ad Targeting:

  • Selected FIFA: soccer fans, NBA: basketball fans and created more general campaigns targeting gamers and sports enthusiasts.

Search Ad Keywords:

The keywords chosen were broken down into 34 separate ad groups. The FIFA ad group for example, included keywords like FIFA tournaments, FIFA competition, FIFA play for money and FIFA eSports among others. The NBA2 used similar keywords, only substituting “FIFA” with “NBA2”. While there were also more broad ad groups that did not include game or sport names, others were branded ad groups, including keywords such as world gaming tournament, world gaming competition, and so forth.

Facebook Ad Examples:

The Results

Over a 2-month period, all paid campaigns performed well with a total of 112 registrations and an additional 53,631 unique visitors to the website.

AdWords search ads generated 60% of the total paid registrations.

In addition to registrations, social engagement resulted in almost 500 post reactions and 4,000 link clicks. Page likes also increased by nearly 300.

Comparing registrations for the same 2 months during the previous year (June – July – 2017 vs June – July 2016):

  • Home page: 1.1% vs 0.7% conversion rate
  • Registration page: 27.4% vs 0.8% conversion rate
  • Games page: 0.6% vs 0.0% conversion rate

Conclusion

Google Display Network and Facebook ads have increased WorldGaming’s public reach; a much wider audience of gamers with an interest in eSports connect with WorldGaming through these ads shown right on their individual Facebook account pages or on sites with related topics in the Google Display Network.

The ad campaign was a worthwhile effort as it significantly improved registration rates. Although the previous strategy of increasing traffic on the blog page https://inside.worldgaming.com, (knowing that a percentage of visitors will click to register for tournaments) is still a good strategy, advertising dollars were better spent on a more direct approach, especially since there is an ever-growing online gaming community looking to compete.