Advertising Will Resume Shortly - the shortcomings of Streaming Ads in Live Sports

Missed Opportunities

March Madness 2023 was the first time I noticed one of the several phenomenon that streaming and digital inventory partners hate to talk about: unsold spots.

I was ten months into my new role at Continuum after making the leap into advertising having spent the first eight years of my career in software. It was day one of March Madness, and we had queued up the games on the TVs in our Denver office. The kitchen TV is in clear site from my cube, and like countless others in the US, I was doing my best to keep one eye on the basketball mayhem and one eye on my work. I was maintaining a semblance of productivity when I noticed something. We had authenticated into the CBS streaming app on the Smart TV through our company cable plan, and the game was streaming well. However, the game cut to an ad break, and we were met with a placeholder screen with the CBS and March Madness logos and some text to the tune of, "We'll be right back."

"That's odd" I thought, "Why aren't we being served an ad?" I thought we'd get served some personalized ad via streaming, something more personalized and lower-funnel than linear. Instead, we were served this "Stay Tuned" screen for the entire ad break. I messaged our resident expert via our internal chat and asked him why that might be the case. "Crazy" he said, "Must be an unsold spot. That's surprising."

The game resumed, and I got back to work. It was the year Furman upset Virginia, and a good friend of mine played football at Furman. I did my best to focus between texts to my friend and excited yells from the announcers calling the game. But second only to my shock at the upset was the fact that we had several more full breaks taken up by the "Stay Tuned" screen, and the rest were broken up by the same three or four ads on repeat.

This ad again?

The experience sparked several conversations internally. Why the "Stay Tuned" screen? One occurrence might be chalked up to digital DSPs adjusting to the spike in demand. But it's March Madness! They know millions are tuning in. They had to plan for this. What about the ads we did see? It was the same four ads over and over again. Those must have been their big RFP or IO deals. But isn't it supposed to be programmatic? Can't any advertiser spin up an account with The Trade Desk or any of the other dime-a-dozen DSPs to access this inventory?

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss

It was then I began my education in streaming advertising in its true form. Streaming isn't built for live event demand, let alone live sports demand. As we've integrated more and more streaming inventory into our OTIS platform for our clients to access, we've learned something. Inventory holders still push for Upfront deals, spending minimums, ancillary programming via the classic old RFP model. Then why do streaming platforms and DSPs tout their inventory as accessible programmatically? As mentioned in the linked article above from AdTech Explained, streaming ad technology actually isn't built for live sports demand (see section titled "Pre-Approvals). It still often requires a human touch for creative approval, "pre-ingesting" ad creative, which goes hand-in-hand with negotiation, NOT programmatic ad exchanging. But the technical inability of streaming platforms to serve ad demand isn't the whole problem.

Remember the Upfronts? You know, the practice of inventory holders negotiating fat deals with advertisers and agencies ahead of the broadcast year, ensuring certain CPMs, impression minimums, and premium inventory? Guess what. All the major streaming inventory holders do it too. Why do you think we got the same four ads on repeat amidst the "Stay Tuned" screen? Do you think Subway's and Scott's Turf Builder's marketing teams wanted to bombard and fatigue our office full of Denver media professionals? No, they had Upfront dollars set with CBS that needed to be run.

It's not getting any better

Being in the ad industry working at a linear-first exchange has led to numerous condescending conversations with folks in the programmatic and digital space talking down at linear. It doesn't bother me, viewership is in fact changing, and programmatic and digital are where the eyeballs are moving and are built on some very impressive technology. What does bother me, is the brainless and dishonest blabbering of inaccurate value propositions ascribed to digital. "It's personalized!" "It's real-time insertion!" "It's targeted!" "It's lower-funnel!" Is it?

Just last night, I turned on the TV with my family to watch a bit of the NFL season opener between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys. Besides the fact that I had to sign up for a Peacock Premium trial because NBC has the rights to first game of the season, NOT Amazon Prime Video, EVEN THOUGH it was a Thursday night game and Amazon has TNF rights, I was AGAIN met with streaming ad shenanigans. For the first 45 minutes of watching, I'm not lying, every single ad break was a "Stay Tuned" screen of aerial footage of various NFL stadiums. In the upper right was the NFL Kickoff 2025 presented by YouTube TV logo and, in the center of the screen, the text "Coverage will resume shortly". I'll be honest, Heinz Field looks pretty sweet from a blimp. But the fact that Peacock Premium via Prime Video couldn't serve me an ad on OPENING NIGHT of the most viewed sports programming in America is beyond embarrassing.

I immediately texted our President, Pat Ivers, and our COO, Tyler Scruggs to ask if they were watching the game. Tyler was at a child's sports practice, but Pat was watching the game at a local burger bar (The Cherry Cricket is a must if you're ever in Denver). I was watching the game at home getting served no ads. Pat was at the local bar getting served ads AND a burger (credit goes to Pat for the burger joke). Amazon, despite its huge data panel on me as a Prime customer, powered by its massive Retail Media Network, and Peacock, despite all its investment in its digital ad business, didn't serve me a single ad until after the storm break with minutes left in the third quarter. That's over two hours of premium football viewership by a husband, father, and Prime customer viewed via streaming without a single ad. Just bird's eye views of stadiums.

Linear AND Streaming

Believe it or not, the point of this article is not to deprecate streaming. While I do want to point out that streaming advertising fails to deliver on many of its claimed value propositions, I think the main takeaway for advertisers is this. If streaming does fail, or at least under-delivers on its promises, why would you put all, or even most of your live sports dollars on streaming? I talk to friends about this somewhat often, and everyone agrees: the streaming ad experience is not better than linear in any meaningful way. Viewers get bombarded and fatigued by the Upfront saturation that advertisers like you are competing with. If streaming live sports ads are still working out so many kinks, why would you put all your budget in that basket?

What we've learned at Continuum is that, for live sports, linear first supplemented with streaming is the best blend for advertisers to get the best reach, frequency, and efficiency. We've run billions and billions of spots and have done the hard work of combining cable, broadcast, and streaming inventory into our OTIS platform. Advertisers can access premium sports programming across all inventory via national, regional, or local footprints. We do this all at no cost, and we operate on the margin we surface with our scale and one-of-a-kind platform. If you're ready for a managed service partner that makes live sports advertising transparent and effective - across linear and streaming, we'd love to chat.