Content Consumption Trends: Kentucky Derby

As Spectrum’s platform monitors content consumption trends, we’ve seen sports content begin to increase again after months off due to the coronavirus epidemic. The Kentucky Derby was postponed from May to September this year to allow fans to attend, so we decided to explore content trends around this topic.

Since our platform can look back up to 18 months of previous content consumption within a topic, we were able to find that content around the Kentucky Derby began dramatically increasing exactly two weeks before the event. During the week of the 2019 race, there were over 175MM page-level impressions on derby content alone. Buzz around the Kentucky Derby followed two weeks after the event as well, providing advertisers with an entire month of aligning with Kentucky Derby content.

Looking at this year’s consumption trends, content spiked before the original Kentucky Derby date as people were reading about how to watch the virtual race. Also due to COVID-19, the first race in the Triple Crown series was the Belmont Stakes this year. This caused horse racing content to spike in June with hype around the Belmont Stakes and horses moving on to race in the Kentucky Derby.

As many fans are eager for sports to return, we expect there will be even more cookieless opportunities available for targeting surrounding this year’s Kentucky Derby. Spectrum’s platform is a great planning tool to review previous content trends to inform campaign start dates. Our platform also allows you to align with content consumption as it trends in real-time. If you have a campaign reaching sports fans, Spectrum can reach your ideal consumers at the page-level. Contact us for more info.