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Industry
Media & entertainment
Objective
Verdens Gang (VG) aimed to solidify its reputation as Norway’s premier destination for live football coverage during the FIFA World Cup 2026. Instead of a standard, always-on advertising approach, the goal was to cut through tournament clutter by delivering real-time, dynamic match updates directly into public spaces. By doing so, VG sought to concentrate its visibility and media spend exactly when audience attention and national pride were at their highest.
Results
By syncing programmatic DOOH screens with live API sports data, the campaign delivered immense contextual scale. Generating over 6.35 million impressions, the strategy effectively transformed everyday transit environments into live editorial dashboards. This precision timing ensured VG dominated the public conversation, appearing front and centre exactly when crucial goals were scored, driving massive brand relevance without wasting a single ad impression.
Key Product
Demand-Side Platform (DSP)
Setting the stage for the 2026 World Cup
When the FIFA World Cup 2026 kicked off, Norwegian media giant Verdens Gang (VG) sought to solidify its position as the ultimate destination for live football coverage.
Rather than relying on a conventional, always-on tournament campaign, VG envisioned something far more ambitious: extending its real-time match reporting directly into the public spaces of Norway's biggest cities. Partnering with dentsu Norway and Vistar Media, VG launched a dynamic DOOH campaign that behaved less like traditional advertising and more like a live editorial sports ticker.
The challenge: cutting through the noise of a major global sporting event
During major sporting events like the World Cup, consumer attention is intensely fragmented, and media landscapes become highly cluttered. VG's challenge was to cut through this noise and concentrate its visibility around the specific moments when football audiences were most engaged. The brand needed a solution that would not only capture attention during high-stakes matches but also drive immediate relevance and traffic back to their website (VG.no). For a publisher built on breaking news and live updates, a static, unmoving creative was simply not an option.
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The response: activating live API data for real-time DOOH delivery
To meet this challenge, VG and dentsu Norway leveraged programmatic DOOH to create a campaign that dynamically adapted to the realities of the tournament on the fly. The strategy was built on three core pillars:
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- Real-time dynamic creative: Powered by Vistar Media's Creative Studio, the campaign integrated directly with Schibsted's Sportsnext API. This allowed the DOOH screens to automatically display live scores during selected matches, trigger celebratory creatives the moment Norway or an opponent scored, and broadcast final results immediately after the final whistle, all without any manual intervention.
- Precision timing over broad reach: Instead of relying on third-party audience data or maintaining a continuous, diluted presence throughout the month-long tournament, the targeting strategy prioritised context and timing. Ad delivery was strictly concentrated around relevant games, specifically focusing on Norway's fixtures and high-stakes knockout-stage matches.
- Strategic urban placements: The campaign was activated across high-traffic transit and outdoor environments, including JCDecaux subways, train stations, and urban panels, in Oslo, Stavanger, Trondheim, and Bergen. By intercepting commuters and fans on the move, VG successfully made its brand a seamless part of the live football experience.
- Creative analysis: An AI-based creative insights analysis by Vistar Media revealed that the creative's bold red background and real-time score updates effectively captured attention, performing particularly well on urban street panels (3.9 attentive seconds).
- Real-time dynamic creative: Powered by Vistar Media's Creative Studio, the campaign integrated directly with Schibsted's Sportsnext API. This allowed the DOOH screens to automatically display live scores during selected matches, trigger celebratory creatives the moment Norway or an opponent scored, and broadcast final results immediately after the final whistle, all without any manual intervention.
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The results: delivering massive scale and precise editorial impact
By focusing its media investment exclusively on peak moments of engagement, VG's campaign delivered massive scale alongside precise editorial impact. The real-time activation proved that DOOH can transcend traditional advertising to become a highly relevant public utility.
- 6.35M+ total impressions delivered at scale across Norway
- 897,000+ total ad plays triggered precisely during and after critical matches
- 5.8M+ subway impressions reaching high-dwell audiences in transit environments
The highly concentrated delivery strategy paid off tremendously during key national moments. For instance, the highly anticipated Norway vs. Iraq group stage match generated over 527,000 impressions in a single day. Geographically, the campaign achieved dominant visibility in the capital, with Oslo accounting for 6.22 million of the total impressions, supported by targeted reach in key hubs like Stavanger, Trondheim, and Bergen. Transit environments proved to be the most effective channels, with subway networks alone driving over 5.85 million impressions, followed by nearly 380,000 impressions across train stations.
Ultimately, by transforming everyday transit screens into live sports dashboards, VG successfully reinforced its reputation as the go-to source for breaking football news, ensuring the brand was front and centre whenever a critical goal was scored.
“Programmatic DOOH gave us the flexibility to make VG’s campaign truly responsive to what was happening on the football field. By connecting live match data with dynamic creative and activating around the most anticipated moments, we could turn DOOH into an extension of VG’s live football coverage. Vistar made it possible to bring the data, creative and media activation together in one seamless setup.”
Hannah Hurvenes Clarke, Activation Lead at Dentsu Norway