Despite changing viewing habits, one thing is clear: audiences still have a big appetite for live TV because it’s current, engaging, and communal. As premium live events become increasingly available across streaming platforms, advertisers have a unique opportunity to diversify their monetization strategies and reach the large, highly engaged audiences who used to be near-exclusive to traditional broadcast environments.
Amid continued ad view growth in the United States (6%) and Europe (17%), as reported in the 2H 2023 FreeWheel Video Marketplace Report, consumers, advertisers, and publishers can all benefit from the expansion of live premium video across streaming.1 Read on for insights about how to leverage live video to drive advertising results.
Live Premium Video: An Overview
Live premium video refers to live, real-time broadcasts like news and sports events that attract millions of viewers who tune in across traditional TV and streaming. You’ve likely already noticed live premium video’s entry into streaming. One notable live premium video expansion into digital includes the National Football League’s (NFL) licensing of exclusive rights for Thursday Night Football to Amazon Prime and simultaneous airings of Sunday Night Football across Peacock and NBC.2
Viewers are fully embracing live premium video’s expansion into streaming; Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime accounts for roughly 25% of network traffic on Thursday nights in season, while the 2023 Grammys drew over 17 million viewers across traditional TV and streaming, including 173% more streams than the previous year.3,4
Advertisers, too, are leaning into live video environments since it enables them to reach highly engaged viewers in real-time at scale. The top three reasons advertisers buy ads on live TV are the large, simultaneous audience it offers, its high viewer engagement, and the positive brand associations it enables.5
As live video becomes more available across streaming platforms, advertisers can reach premium audiences across more screens. And with live content accounting for 59% of U.S. and 19% of European total ad views, this area represents a critical growth opportunity for advertisers and publishers.1
Capitalizing on the Live Opportunity with Programmatic
Today, advertisers are increasingly exploring the most cost- and time-efficient ways to activate live event advertising in streaming environments. In doing so, many are looking to programmatic buying, which provides greater automation and increased spend efficiency when compared to traditional TV approaches.
Currently, U.S. ad views on all live events content, like sports and news, are transacted programmatically a fraction of the time. While publishers are in the early stages of bridging the power of traditional live TV with the digital ecosystem, programmatic’s share of live event advertising will likely grow in the coming years as the industry works to ensure the right capabilities are established. This will allow both advertisers and publishers to easily activate programmatic for live.
As supply path optimization improves and advertisers and publishers get accustomed to transacting on TV inventory programmatically, the value of programmatic as a transaction type in the live environment will only rise.
The future is programmatic. Now is the time for advertisers to get more comfortable using programmatic tools to buy live TV — and for publishers to do the same in using those tools to sell it. Those who take the leap will quickly realize the benefits of programmatic such as the ability to optimize the price of every ad opportunity, enhanced customization, and more granular and readily available metrics.
Looking Ahead
As the industry moves towards combining the power of live events with the power of digital channels, like streaming, and transaction types, publishers and advertisers will gain prime opportunities for engaging with high volumes of premium viewers for tentpole events like the U.S. presidential election, the Super Bowl, and beyond.
To take full advantage of live video’s expansion into streaming, the industry should work to ensure we’re embracing past learnings to put systems and processes in place in order to prepare. Part of this will be navigating the inherent challenges that come with programmatically transacting on the live environment, including managing high volumes of ad requests and responses, and preserving quality control of creative assets. In order to best set themselves up for success, advertisers should work with partners that have the tech infrastructure in place to help minimize logistical challenges.
The publishers and advertisers that successfully leverage supply path optimization and reliable quality control will be the ones who reach and captivate massive, high-engaged audiences via live video.
For more information on the opportunity of live content, download It’s Only Live Once: How TV Advertisers Can Capture Audiences in the Moment.
Sources:
- FreeWheel, FreeWheel Video Marketplace Report: 2H 2023
- CNBC, “NFL finalizes new 11-year media rights deal, Amazon gets exclusive Thursday Night rights.” March 18, 2024
- Statista. “Average television viewership of the NFL regular season from 2010 to 2023.” Gough, Christina. January 11, 2024
- Forbes, “The Grammys 2024: A Four-Year High With 16.9 Million Viewers,” Published 2/5/2024
- Advertiser Perceptions survey commissioned by FreeWheel, April 2024
