Brands over time

Virgin Media
over time

Every year keeps its colour across every chart.│ ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022

185 of Virgin Media's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, 2015 to 2025, measured sentence by sentence, 92 of them recovered from the Internet Archive. How the writing has moved over the years, how it compares with 14 other mobile and broadband providers, and what it sounds like in its own words.

Pages measured
185
Years covered
2015–25
Archived before ChatGPT
92
Blog · press
130 · 55

01 · Homepage

One capture a year

Virgin Media's homepage from 2007 to 2026, closest to 1 July, from the Internet Archive. Pick a year or press play. Each headline is quoted from its capture and links to the archived copy.

2026virginmedia.com1 Jul 2026
Virgin Media homepage, 1 Jul 2026

Screenshot of Virgin Media’s homepage (virginmedia.com) as archived by the Internet Archive on 1 Jul 2026. © Virgin Media or its licensors. Shown for comparison and review; not endorsed by Virgin Media.

Homepage

2026

“Bag a 43” LG Ultra HD TV on us”

Page title

Virgin Media | Cable Deals - See What You Can Do

Open on the Internet Archive
  1. 2007Find it fast
  2. 2012Start building your bundle
  3. 2015My Virgin Media
  4. 2019Get up to £125 bill credit with our broadband & phone packages
  5. 2022Bigger is better
  6. 2026Bag a 43” LG Ultra HD TV on us

19 captures. Screenshots are rendered from the archive and can pull in images archived later than the page itself; dates come from the capture. Years without a capture are greyed out in the strip.

02 · Measures by year

How the writing moved

Every year’s pages, averaged. Pick a measure. Hatched bars rest on fewer than 10 pages: context, not a finding. The page count sits under each year.

Sentence lengthAverage words per sentence.
8
16
24
Telecoms avg 13.2
12.9
14.1
14.6
15.0
19.1
16.3
18.6
10.7
14.8
ChatGPT · Nov 2022
20159 pp
201638 pp
201717 pp
20189 pp
20192 pp
20204 pp
20216 pp
20226 pp
2023no pages
2024no pages
20251 pp
2026no pages
10 or more pagesFewer than 10 pages: context, not a findingSector averageChatGPT released
Show as a table
YearSentence lengthPages
201512.99
201614.138
201714.617
201815.09
201919.12
202016.34
202118.66
202210.76
202514.81

Years with pages: 2015 (9), 2016 (38), 2017 (17), 2018 (9), 2019 (2), 2020 (4), 2021 (6), 2022 (6), 2025 (1). Dates come from page metadata, structured data, the URL, or the month a page was first archived (a latest possible date).

03 · Against its sector

Virgin Media among mobile and broadband providers

Each dot is one brand’s mean across all its measured pages; the tick is the sector average. Only brands with 10 or more measured pages are shown or counted. Select a dot to open that brand.

  1. "We"

    71% more than its sector

    57% against a sector average of 34%; highest of 13.

  2. Questions

    43% less than its sector

    2.4 against a sector average of 4.3; 2nd lowest of 13.

  3. "You"

    39% less than its sector

    37% against a sector average of 60%; 2nd lowest of 13.

Sentence length5th highest of 13
Virgin Media 13.7
9.716.5
Contractions4th lowest of 13
Virgin Media 15.1
12.725.2
"You"2nd lowest of 13
Virgin Media 37%
30%84%
"We"Highest of 13
Virgin Media 57%
14%57%
Questions2nd lowest of 13
Virgin Media 2.4
0.97.0
Long words5th highest of 13
Virgin Media 26%
19%31%
Em dashes4th lowest of 13
Virgin Media 1.72
0.974.72
AI-associated wordsMid-table, 8th of 13
Virgin Media 0.96
0.462.88
ExclamationsMid-table, 7th of 13
Virgin Media 0.41
0.162.28
Page length2nd lowest of 13
Virgin Media 679
5111,910

Pages measured: TalkTalk 74 · Hyperoptic 46 · Community Fibre 133 · SMARTY 183 · iD Mobile 49 · Lebara 0 · Lycamobile 112 · O2 138 · Zen Internet 186 · BT 9 · Sky 324 · Virgin Media 185 · Vodafone 172 · Three 141 · giffgaff 63. Measures and method: SGR-010; the brand list and sectors come from SGR-009.

04 · Vocabulary

Words Virgin Media uses more than its peers

The words this brand reaches for more often than the rest of its sector. This is subject matter more than voice.

channels74.5 vs 3.5
sports89.8 vs 10.8
growth59.0 vs 2.5
sustainable54.9 vs 1.8
sustainability43.9 vs 2.7
prime44.7 vs 3.3
required32.6 vs 2.2
house38.0 vs 4.0
viewers28.5 vs 1.9
sport33.0 vs 3.2
what's23.0 vs 1.0
vivid28.1 vs 0.3
Virgin MediaSector peers

Uses per 10,000 words, ranked by weighted log-odds (Monroe et al. 2008) across 185 pages. Product names and page furniture filtered automatically; list not yet reviewed.

05 · In its own words

What it sounded like

Openings of real pages, quoted word for word, oldest first. Each links to the page, or to the Internet Archive’s copy when it has gone.

201728 Aug · BlogArchived copy
“Two recent examples of our people supporting good causes – and getting rather muddy in the process – include community gardening in Glasgow and completing a Tough Mudder race for Scope.”
Getting muddy for good causes
20211 Apr · PressArchived copy
“Coinciding with the mini heatwave and the relaxation of lockdown measures, Virgin Media recorded a 19% drop in afternoon upstream traffic – which includes video calls and sending emails – when comparing Tuesday 30 March, the hottest day of the year so far, with the average lockdown weekday.”
Heatwave: Brits log off early to take advantage of hot spell
20246 Sep · Blog
“Explore the filming locations of your favourite TV shows, from the iconic Lycean Building in Netflix Series "The Crown" to the charming Cimetière Père Lachaise featured in Netflix Series "Emily in Paris." Embark on a personalised TV tour, virtually or in person, by selecting your favourite shows and entering a location to uncover nearby TV sites of significance.”
TV Shows Filming Locations in Britain and Europe
20246 Sep · Blog
“Explore the filming locations of your favourite TV shows, from the iconic Lycean Building in Netflix Series "The Crown" to the charming Cimetière Père Lachaise featured in Netflix Series "Emily in Paris." Embark on a personalised TV tour, virtually or in person, by selecting your favourite shows and entering a location to uncover nearby TV sites of significance.”
TV Shows Filming Locations in Britain and Europe

06 · Every page

All 193 pages, by year

The full list behind every number above, with links to the live page or the archived copy. 185 count towards the measures; the rest were not measured (1 pdf report (annual report, info pack), 3 under 150 words of text, 4 mostly short lines (lists, tables, link pages) rather than prose). Pages with no reliable date count in the overall numbers but in no year.

20251 page
20226 pages
20216 pages
20204 pages
20192 pages
20189 pages
201717 pages
201638 pages
20159 pages
In the overall numbers, no year93 pages
Not measured8 pages

07 · Method

How this was measured

The pages

Virgin Media's own blog posts, press releases and announcements, fetched from the live site in 2026 and from the Internet Archive for 2015 to November 2022. Homepages are shown as captures; product and help pages are not measured.

The measures

Code counts from ScriptGrain’s writing instruments: sentence length and rhythm, contractions, pronouns, punctuation, long words, and three published lists of AI-associated words. No AI model reads or judges any page.

What it cannot say

These measures describe style. They cannot tell who or what wrote a page, and nothing here says or implies that any brand used AI to write.

Sample sizes

Every number carries its page count. Years under 10 pages, and before-and-after comparisons with under 10 pages on a side, are shown as context only.

Sentence length
Average words per sentence.
Sentence rhythm
How much sentence length varies (standard deviation over mean). Higher reads less even.
Contractions
Contractions (we're, you'll, it's) per 1,000 words. A rough gauge of how conversational the writing is.
"You"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "you": how much the writing addresses the reader.
"We"
Share of I/we/you pronouns that are "we": how much the writing talks about the organisation.
Questions
Question marks per 1,000 words.
Exclamations
Exclamation marks per 1,000 words.
Long words
Share of words with seven or more letters.
Em dashes
Em dashes per 1,000 words.
AI-associated words
Words from SGR-007's three AI-associated lists, per 1,000 words. These are style markers that people used long before ChatGPT; a higher rate says nothing about who or what wrote the page.
AI-era marketing words
Marketing words that became more common in AI-era copy (seamless, elevate, unlock...), per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Quieter LLM-favoured words
Everyday words language models are known to over-use, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
AI-associated sentence shapes
Sentence patterns such as "not just X, but Y", found by ScriptGrain's cliche checker, per 1,000 words. A style measure only.
Page length
Average words per page.

Studies: SGR-009: Do brands in the same sector sound the same? · SGR-010: How UK brands write · SGR-011: Did brand writing change after ChatGPT?.