#1 Guide to media-buying around live sport
Find moments that matter
Finding the right time and place to serve your ads is even more important for sports fans compared to your average consumer.
Aligning media buying to what’s happening in the world of sport is an incredible tactic to drive reach and conversions. But it’s a fine art.
To make it work you need more than just audience behavior and demographic data. You need to be fully plugged into the sporting calendar and every minute of live games. This enables really smart automation and is known as contextual targeting.
It's all about context
Every marketer understands that connecting their brand or product to live sports messaging helps cut through the noise, increase brand recall and deliver results.
If third-party cookies become a thing of the past, contextual targeting is very much the future. It enables you to take everything you know about a sports fan and deliver a timely, relevant and personalised ad. Scale this up to an audience of millions and you’re in business.
It’s all made possible by plugging live sports data into media buying technology. This allows spend to be tightly paced during the gameweek and acts as a trigger for campaigns at key moments – including team roster news, kick-off countdowns and even when a touchdown is scored.
The magic of sports data
When we say live sports data, we mean anything that relates to a sporting event. This data is built-in to our algorithmic pacing curve which drives display, audio and connected TV spend, minute-by-minute.
Live sports data helps our traders distribute programmatic ads when fan emotion is greatest, like after a TD pass is thrown or a player hits 100 passing yards. But it also allows them to react in real-time, capitalizing on the excitement when the line-ups are announced or a controversial referee decision occurs.
Many brands activate paid media campaigns at half-time. To stand out, you need to seize the big moments.
Reach fans all the time
But sport isn’t only about the live game. It’s important to ramp-up your spend through the gameweek; the final 48 hours before kick-off is a key time to purchase ads. You’ll want to lay awareness early in the week before being more direct with your CTA closer to the game. Across past campaigns, this tactic has consistently cut CPAs.
Our audience data tells us exactly how sports fans behave in real-time. For example, during Super Bowl week last year we knew that NFL fan online activity grew by 28% between Thursday and Friday, allowing us to pace spend on behalf of our customers accordingly.
This data also enables us to identify fans interested in your brand or sector. We can then track how they interact with your ads, to adapt and push them along to purchase faster.
Customer story:
Heineken
As an official partner of UEFA Euro 2020, Heineken wanted to engage UK sports fans with data-driven video content across social media, during live matches.
How Genius helps you win
Our Genius Programmatic service has helped brands reach and engage fans for over 15 years.
We layer in sporting context to how we purchase inventory, using live sports data, an algorithmic sports pacing curve and first-party audience data.
For our clients, this results in reduced acquisition costs, better conversion rates and far greater spend efficiency.