Election-furore reached fever pitch last week as the 2024 UK General Election took place. With polling stations opening at 7am on Thursday, our premium publishers covered all the action throughout the day and night until the final votes were counted, and Labour’s historic landslide victory was declared.
Topical News
The 2024 summer of sport continued last week with huge reader interest in a multitude of disciplines across major sporting events. Overall, reader engagement with Sport content increased by almost a quarter to 94.8m page views.
Tennis page views grew 5.8x as Wimbledon began. Victory for Lewis Hamilton at the British Grand Prix fuelled +70% Formula 1 growth. Mark Cavendish’s record 35th Tour de France stage win boosted Cycling by +27%. Finally, England’s progression to the semi-final stage at the Euros, grew Football by +9%.
With more fabulous sport on the way later this month when the Paris Games begin, we’ve curated a very special Olympic PMP package to accelerate campaign activation across our Premium Web platform. See the package here and go for gold with Ozone.
Seasonal Events
Inclement weather aside, July saw the summer holiday season kick off. This summer, office workers are set to benefit from hybrid working as a recent study claims a third of UK companies will now allow employees to work remotely outside the UK, fueling the rise of working from the beach. Remote Working topic page views grew +44% last week.
UK Election 2024
Reader engagement with Politics content across our premium publisher platform grew by +56% last week to a record 93.0m page views. Unsurprisingly, driving growth within the topic were 6.4x higher Elections page views.
On results day, we saw +20% more readers than the prior seven-day average, as new audiences turned to our publishers for trusted coverage. This hugely significant growth showcases the scale of the opportunity for brands to align with highly engaging editorial in premium environments during the biggest moments.
Throughout the election we’ve seen massive fluctuations in the sentiment of the coverage about the UK’s main political contenders. Looking at the two main party leaders…
Keir Starmer’s characteristically cautious campaigning approach appeared to have paid dividends. Positive sentiment editorial grew 12%pts, while negative sentiment editorial fell 9%pts from start to finish.
Despite Rishi Sunak’s best efforts, his six-week campaign failed to change sentiment surrounding the Conservative party, which only saw a 3%pts increase in positive sentiment coverage.
Over the election’s six-week duration, Brits read c.150m editorial pages about the biggest policy areas to stay informed about them. Healthcare topped the chart for most-read category.
