Advent Calendar 2006

It was a Merrier Christmas than ever for each of the clients participating in the 6th edition of the markettiers4dc online Advent Calendar and an equally festive offering for the 14 additional sites that took part. Adventcalendar.net was initially set up in 2000 in response to enquiries from both clients and media owners who wanted a way to address the pressures and opportunities exerted on them by the festive period. Brands wanted a way to secure long lasting, quality coverage in the run up to Christmas when online spending is at its peak whilst site owners needed a way to provide new and attractive content to its users at a very busy time of year. The resulting advent calendar fulfilled both these roles whilst offering the consumer an opportunity to win the prizes on offer as well as giving them ideas for Christmas gifts.

The calendar was featured on 14 independent websites in addition to the adventcalendar.net site itself and where requested, we provided a personalised version of the calendar for each media owner so as to maximise buy-in from both the site and its loyal users. This additional online presence ensured that we were proactively driving traffic to the site in order to maximise page impressions and entry numbers and hence gaining impressive exposure for each brand. We remained in control of the production and editorial content of the site throughout and added value by collecting opt-in data for each of the clients involved.

The campaign was the most successful yet with an overall reach of just over 12 million across the 15 participating sites. The adventcalendar.net site generated 1,937,132 page impressions from over 60,000 unique users and entry numbers were higher than ever. As an example, the Vodafone competition behind the 1st December window generated 9,983 entries of which 11.5% also opted-in to receive more information from the client which gave them more than 1000 serious leads which alone would constitute excellent value on a cost per acquisition basis although in this instance it was regarded as added benefit to the ‘main event’. (Across the whole campaign the average opt in percentage was an astounding 14%)

Feedback from media owners, clients and winners has been enthusiastic and plans are now in place for the 2007 extravaganza!