While many consider the Super Bowl as the biggest sporting event in the world for advertisers, there is little doubt that the FIFA World Cup remains unrivaled in terms of numbers of viewers and advertising opportunities.
Case in point, the highest rated Super Bowl in television history, the 2015 dramatic game between the Atlanta Falcons and the New England Patriots, drew approximately 114.4 million viewers. On the other hand, the 2014 World Cup final between Germany and Argentina, which drew an audience of 1 billion people, the winner is obvious.
Overall, around 3.2 billion people from all over the world watched the games of the 2014 tournament, that’s 188 million per game.
They call it “World Cup fever” for a reason, as almost all advertisers are increasing their budgets during the World Cup. World-Cup-themed campaigns are springing like mushrooms and will continue to spread across the internet during this month. 
In Europe, for example, according to forecasts, the World Cup will be responsible for the 3.6% yearly rise in total media ad spend.
It’s not only major brands. Everyone who markets offers of products that could be targeted to World Cup fans will make them World-Cup-themed. If you are advertising to or serving a Russian audience, failing to mention the World Cup risks making you irrelevant.
So what does that mean for publisher? Plenty. Here are five essential steps you must take to get more money from your website during the World Cup.
If you haven’t already added World-Cup themes to your website, NOW is the time. Make your website with a World-Cup friendly design. Anything from relevant flag colors, balls, cups or players’ images will do the trick. If the theme of your website corresponds stylistically to the ads you display, it will make your users more receptive to them.
If you want to take a step forward in terms of traffic numbers, you have to review the user experience of your website. Review your site, find its weak spots and eliminate them. You can use heatmaps to see how visitors interact with your site or hire a UX expert if you can afford one.
And don’t use annoying ad types. This is important. Sometimes you think the more ads you display the better. More often than not, the opposite is true. A website that displays too many ads is an immediate turn-off for visitors, and they will not hesitate to dump you and go on to your competitor. And since Google released its built-in Chrome ad-blocking software and their focus on ad experience, website that use disruptive ad types will receive a warning letter from Google, which if not addressed, will lead to a penalty from the search engine giant, and that could be a death blow to your website.
Increasingly, advertisers are using keywords to target their audience, and due to GDPR restrictions, that trend is bound to grow. Therefore, you should make sure that the keywords you want users to find you by are present on your website. Make sure your content is SEO friendly, and you will be able to attract a higher number of relevant users.
This step is an obvious one, which you should be doing all the time, but it has greater importance now because of the expected traffic boom. There are many available ad types, each with its advantages and faults. Each audience responds to a different format, and tracking ad clicks will tell you if you are using the right ads or not.
So if you want to make the most out of the World Cup make your website, take the necessary actions to make your website as attractive as it can be to your visitors and track your monetization efforts so you can improve your results on the go.
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