In recent years, the landscape of live event advertising has undergone a significant transformation. With more viewers choosing streaming platforms over traditional linear TV to consume live sports, daily news, and other events, the advertising industry is pivoting to keep up.
This shift to live streaming was especially apparent during the first US presidential debate of 2024. It drew over 30 million viewers to CNN’s different properties across various streaming platforms, including YouTube, presenting a massive opportunity for marketers to engage a tuned-in audience. In fact, studies show that ads served during live events boost brand image and deliver messages to audiences more effectively.
Traditionally, inventory for marquee events has been sold through linear buying workflows, such as upfronts. Capitalizing on the shift to streaming and opening live event inventory to programmatic is a game-changing opportunity for marketers to capture the attention of highly engaged and attentive viewers without the cost and heavy commitment of upfronts.
With all the streaming growth and ad tech advancements in recent years, what’s preventing us from realizing the full potential of programmatic ads in live event streaming?
Challenges in programmatic for live event advertising
- Signals for live event inventory: One of the main challenges in delivering programmatic ads during live events is the lack of signals to distinguish the inventory from other traffic. The livestream attribute within the OpenRTB content object is used to signal that content is being streamed live, but it is insufficient in setting live, real-time event content apart from pre-recorded programs. For example, a live sports game or award show with unscheduled ad breaks has unique traffic patterns and requirements compared to a new TV show episode that a viewer is streaming live, but both would be signaled with the same livestream status in the content object today.
Shoulder content associated with live events, like pre-game shows and red-carpet coverage, is valued differently than other live inventory and should be accurately signaled as well.
These signals are crucial for identifying live event inventory, allowing media buyers to tailor their campaigns effectively and apply different bidding optimization logic. Improving the OpenRTB specification to standardize new fields is an important starting point.
- Infrastructure scalability: The infrastructure required to support programmatic advertising during live events must be capable of handling significant peaks in ad requests. Live events, especially popular ones like sports finals or major political debates, can generate massive spikes in viewership, leading to high concurrency in ad requests. Ensuring programmatic infrastructure can scale to meet these demands without lag or failure is critical for maintaining a smooth viewer experience and maximizing ad revenue.
- Fast activation and budget pacing: The dynamic nature of live events necessitates quick ad activation and precise budget pacing. Buyers must be able to launch and adjust campaigns in real time to capitalize on fleeting moments of high engagement. Alternatively, buyers need to be able to plan for an upcoming live event, which requires forecasting data. Effective budget pacing ensures that ads are delivered consistently throughout the event, avoiding the pitfalls of overspending early on, which leads to missed opportunities later in the event.
- Support for diverse monetization strategies: Live event streaming requires flexible monetization strategies to accommodate various media owner and buyer needs. Traditional TV-style share-of-voice (SOV) buying, where buyers secure a percentage of a tuned-in audience, must coexist with highly addressable buys that leverage data for targeted advertising. This dual approach can maximize revenue potential by catering to both broad-reach campaigns and precision-targeted real-time ads.
The path forward: collaborating toward scalable solutions
While there have been successful one-off implementations showcasing different methodologies for live event advertising, the industry needs to make a collective effort to achieve truly scalable solutions in programmatic streaming TV. A few big players are already investing in their proprietary technologies, but we need a collaborative approach across the entire supply chain—from media owners to buyers to ad tech providers—to benefit all stakeholders, including viewers.
The current state of fragmented solutions highlights the need for standardization and interoperability. Industry-wide standards and best practices can help streamline processes and ensure that different platforms and technologies work seamlessly together. This collaboration will not only improve the efficiency and effectiveness of programmatic advertising, but also foster innovation and growth in this uncharted territory of live streaming.
Leading the charge: ongoing efforts and a call to action
Several initiatives are already in motion to address the challenges and improve live event advertising within the programmatic ecosystem.
As part of our leadership in IAB Tech Lab’s Ad Break Management Working Group, Index is co-authoring a proposal for a new attribute called content.liveevent to be added to the content object in the OpenRTB 2.6 specification. This proposal aims to standardize new fields for improved live event signaling.
More broadly, we’re also leading a newly formed Live Event Ad Serving Sub-Working Group to develop guidance for live event ad serving across various use cases and strategies in streaming. To address the other existing challenges in infrastructure, speed and pacing, and flexible monetization, we’re working to achieve three main goals:
- Allowing sellers to communicate the availability and details of live events to DSPs and buyers in advance
- Facilitating linear-style SOV buying with the measurement benefits of digital and the option for programmatic guaranteed deals
- Facilitating delivery of non-guaranteed demand in live events while operating within DSPs’ queries per second (QPS) constraints
We invite everyone to share their knowledge and perspectives on ad serving in live streaming as the working group develops scenario-specific solutions. We aim to publish a proposal, “Live Event Ad Serving Program,” to provide the industry with a roadmap for standardizing programmatic delivery.
By addressing key hurdles through collaboration and innovation, we as an industry can develop scalable solutions that enhance the live streaming experience for viewers and deliver greater value for both marketers and media owners. We encourage all stakeholders to join these efforts, ensuring a prosperous and dynamic future for live event advertising in the streaming era.
To learn more about programmatic advertising in streaming TV, check out our educational Index Explains video series. If you’d like to get involved in shaping new industry standards for live event advertising, please get in touch with our team.
