Last week was certainly a week of celebration, partying and relaxation. A successful GCSE results day produced another relieved cohort of students that drove up Education content, followed by the famous Reading and Leeds festival where many of these students went to celebrate their efforts.
If festivals weren’t your thing, the release of the anticipated House of the Dragon TV series boosted our Drama TV topic and Sony’s release of their previously PS5 exclusive games on to PC excited many gamers, similarly increasing engagement with Video Gaming.
Summer fun puts Entertainment first
Last week was a significant one for our Video Gaming category. There was a lot of excitement surrounding Sony’s release of their previously very exclusive PS5 only games onto other platforms (apart from Xbox of course). Many speculate this could be attributed to Sony’s $5bn lawsuit over overpriced games. It’s of no surprise that Video Gaming saw a 51% increase in PVs to 523K.
Fans of the Drama TV genre were in for a treat last week as the series ‘House of the Dragon’ - prequel to the immensely popular Game of Thrones - was released. Bringing up page views from 965k views on the 1st to 1.7m views on the 29th, an increase of 76%.
Our Movies content also proved to be a driver of the overall Entertainment engagement as it increased by 14% while the whole Entertainment increase was around 10%. This could shine some light on engagement with new Christmas films heading into the festive season.
Across August 2021, the overall Entertainment category generated an average of 11.5m PVs whereas August this year saw an increase of 57% to 18.5m average PVs. This is clearly in line with the idea that people are still relishing the freedom feeling post COVID, attending festivals, cultural events and cinemas wherever possible.
Take Action
Involvement with recreational activities this summer has naturally been at an all time high following previous years of COVID restrictions. This presents an interesting opportunity heading into the Christmas season as people should equally engage in festive activities they may have missed last year
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