Sports tipping is a big growth area. Ok, maybe not as big as fantasy sports nowadays, but sports tipping is a fun activity to keep your audiences engaged during a sporting season.

So when we wanted to set-up a tipping competition on our sports site, The Roar, we looked to see if there were any sports tipping plugins available for Wordpess.  Unfortunately not. (We’re massive fans of the content management system Wordpress.  I reckon we know the platform inside out.)

So rather than pay yearly subscription costs to one of the large tipping providers, we decided to engineer our own sports tipping plugin for Wordpress.

We get the following benefits:

• each tipper creates an account and profile on our site using Wordpress’s user management function
• more recurring traffic to our site
• sponsorship opportunities available
• viral spread as people invite mates to join them in their tipping comp

Some of the feautures of our sports tipping plugin include:

• ability to set-up any number of tipping competitions, for ANY sport (or event – think tipping on a Presidential election)
• ability to customise whether missing tips for a round receive all home or all away games
• ability to customise points model for win, lose and draw results
• ability for a user to enter one or many open competitions
• comments on each round by fellow tippers (’Go the Waratahs!’)
• reminder email sent by the system, tailored to the competitions a tipper is registered for
• import address book to invite mates to the tipping comp
• powerplay concept (each round one game gets nominated for double the points if you get it correct)
• open questions (ask an open question and mark it at any stage in the tournament)
• leaderboards by sport showing tipping rankings and movement within the round
• display of ‘legend tippers of the round’ board (those tippers who got all correct each round)
• and lots, lots more.

And here it is in action on our sports site, The Roar:  Sports tipping plugin for Wordpress on The Roar.

Want your own tipping comp on your blog or site running Wordpress?

If you have a Wordpress blog and are interested in running your own tipping competition, then drop us a line to discuss how we can help.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting with Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, a few times over the years and in fact invited him to talk at the New York-based online publishing company, Flavorpill, a couple of years ago. So I’m very familiar with his concept of Lovemarks and how its infusion into a brand can help establish a longer-lasting connection with your customer. With that in mind, we were pleased to get some very Lovemarks-like feedback from readers of our pop culture website, Lost At E Minor, when we tied a giveaway into a question about what they liked most about the site.

Here is a sample of just a few of the responses:

Jimmy Smutek
I love the huge range of art and design from across a wide array of media. To have all of this information in one spot is fantastic. Additionally, such a huge amount of info could easily be overwhelming, but Lost at E Minor’s well designed, clean, organized, functional presentation takes all of this information and makes it not only accessible, but managable and enjoyable to boot. Truly fantastic site, don;t quite remember how I found it, but I am so glad I did.

Mela Tran
I love pretty much everything on this site. The music, the art, and definitely all the food. I pretty much go on this site everyday to get updated on whatever’s new and unique. Definitely a very original site!

Tambo
What I really love about E MINOR is the unexpected .. I love random mood browsing, and E MINOR is pure sensory indulgence!! I love all of the amazingly gorgeous art in all it’s forms presented on E MINOR. Thanks for the bottomless pit of inspiration. Another Random Thought.

Eric
LAEM is anything but. It lets me sit down once or twice a week and learn about dozens of new creative projects and emerging culture that don’t just feel like they’ve been sourced from the most diverse corners of internet, but instead the actual world; something I’ve yet to find anywhere else.

Hayley
I love the movement of Lost at E Minor, it goes from funky design in Prague to Diners in Nowhere USA. From creepy craigslist reenactments to cute bunny commercials to awing murals. And I love my city Halifax, NS, for all the tiny galleries, spoken word spaces, big bands in little pubs and cars that stop if a pedestrian even looks at the street.

Felicity C
Looooooooooooooooooooooove it
Originality
Stunning artwork
Totally unique

Artisitic
Transcending

Exciting

Myriad of colour
Individuality
Never disappoints
Obviously cool
Revolutionary

Hannah
I cant get away from this site! i check it almost everyday and everyday i am profoundly amazed by what i see and read. It so refreshing knowing that there are so many people in this world that have such passion for what they do and create. Right now i am attempting to write yet again another essay for school and i have just found something to link up my artist, cheers! Thanks for the constant supply of outstanding, shock, horror, beauty, talent.

Read more reasons why our readers think Lost At E Minor is a Lovemark brand.

Click through rates (CTRs). Ahh, that crazy metric that punches well above its weight in the debate about online advertising performance. Let’s state this upfront: I’ve never been a big fan on the focus on CTRs. New research backs this skepticism up with compelling data.

A recent study – “Natural Born Clickers” from ComScore and media agency Starcom – casts light on who clicks on display ads, who ends up at campaign sites, and provides some interesting take-outs for online advertisers and publishers. Adage covers the study nicely.

The first observation I pulled from the article is that 16% of the online audience in the US are responsible for 80% of clicks.

What to make of this?

Firstly, I think this resonates with how many of us behave online. We see ads. Some cut-through and register with us. Do we click? Well, it depends on the creative.

I’ve enjoyed the recent BWS ads which have run on The Roar. They politely expand and provide compelling reasons to interact with the brand (eg, by asking what kind of wine person you are via a short wizard within the creative).

So as with all advertising, getting cut-through in your message is a challenge. Many ads don’t register with consumers. But some will. The types of people who click on a lot of display ads may be those with time on their hands and not necessarily the people a brand is trying to engage with.

And clicking to end up at a new destination isn’t usually a goal of a consumer. But certain creative makes interacting with a brand more compelling.

So to me, CTRs are a measure of creative effectiveness as much as anything else.

What also comes out in the study is that a low number of clicks doesn’t necessarily mean display banners aren’t doing their job.

The study found that display ads, regardless of clicks, generate significant increase in campaign and brand site visits. Brand searches increased too. As did sales from those exposed to the display ads.

This effect lasts, with people exposed to the ads 45% more likely to visit the brand’s site after four weeks.

So online display advertising works. Can we end this debate now?

We recently completed a campaign on Lost At E Minor with an alcohol brand. The click through rates on the creative weren’t exceptional.

But we would be foolish to say that the campaign wasn’t a success.

To test the effectiveness, we must measure increases in sales. At the point of sale, are our audience more likely to buy the brand given it’s association with our site? I would say yes.

Or are they more likely to pay a premium price for the product? Probably yes again.

But these are harder to measure metrics, especially when a campaign is running across multiple sites and you’re trying to optimise site placement. But these are the right metrics to be assessing when judging online display advertising performance.

Another approach to testing advertising effectiveness is to measure backwards.

Pick a group of your ‘best’ customers. Then find out what path they followed to your brand. A little harder than CTR figures, but much more accurate.