February 04, 2011
There are a few things I have yet to accurately predict with Internet data, namely political races and sporting events. Politics is tricky given the existence of confounding variables in visits to political sites. Sporting events, as skill based competition, have little relationship to search volume or Internet visits. That being said, there’s no reason why we can’t have a little fun with the data.
On our Experian Marketing Forward Blog we have some great posts comparing the two geographic markets of Green Bay and Pittsburgh (here and here). With Experian Hitwise, using the official team sites for the Packers and Steelers (assuming visitors to each site is a good proxy for a team fan) we can analyze the difference between the two.
At Experian Hitwise, we have the ability to report, in aggregate on the VantageScore bins for visitors to sites and categories (VantageScore is a grade-based credit scoring system, A = best credit, F= worst credit).
Here’s the comparison of visitors to the Steelers’ and Packers’ websites over the last four weeks:
While the latest Vegas odds are still showing Green Bay favored by three. The spread in VantageScore for visitors to the two sites shows a much stronger gap. While this might not help predict Sunday’s winner, I’m guessing that Packer fans have been able to finance better last-minute LCD TV purchases for the game.