ADVERTISING ON OTT/NFL CONTENT – WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

We do not require upfront commitments

It is a delicate time for advertising and circumstances change rapidly from week to week. As news updates surface surrounding COVID-19, marketers are forced to shift and refocus their campaigns. Given the level of uncertainty and the economic downturn, it is no surprise that a high volume of advertisers are backing out of their upfront commitments.

This is where the flexibility of OTT/CTV can be leveraged for NFL advertising. We have done the heavy lifting with negotiating premium, curated inventory for a great CMP and zero upfront commitments for our clients. This is a huge win for advertisers who find themselves in positions where they need to pivot quickly at any point.

NFL advertising on OTT means higher viewability and non-skippable ads

Think about all the individuals who skip out on ads when they record a game through traditional broadcast. Not only does this hurt overall performance, it skews the metrics. This is one area where NFL advertising on OTT offers a substantial advantage.

• The audience is already actively engaged – On OTT, the viewer is already paying attention and tuned in to the content streaming.
• The advertising is non-skippable – Because the ad placements on OTT are shorter than commercials on standard television (:30 or Less), most streaming services make the ads non-skippable, which increases the chances of maintaining audience attention overall.

Big data allows for hyper-targeting when it comes to NFL advertising on OTT

With programmatic advertising of any type, including OTT, the initial concern that comes up is whether there are high enough impressions since it is a smaller piece of the overall pie. This is where we can lean into the hyper-targeting capabilities of OTT advertising to even out the imbalance. Instead of being limited to targeting generic households, we can significantly narrow down your ideal audience through 6 different filtering methods.

This is a game-changer for advertisers who are working with smaller budgets and trying to yield higher ROIs. When we use the term “hyper-target,” we are talking about beyond the standard age, gender, location categories, it goes exponentially further than that.

Here are some of the hyper-targeting categories:

• Behavioral Targeting – targeting audiences based on interests, hobbies, online activities, lifestyle, etc.
• Contextual Targeting – targeting audiences based on viewing history e.g. sports, comedy, outdoor shows vs. sports, action, thrillers
• Technographic Targeting – targeting audiences based on device characteristics i.e. hardware, operating system, connection speed, etc.
• Traditional Geographic Targeting – cities, zip codes, DMA’s, etc. are still alive and well in OTT targeting
• Real-Time GPS-Based Geographic Targeting – targeting audiences based on their real-time location and where they are streaming the game from and/or where they physically go on a regular basis.
• Demographic Targeting – targeting audiences based on objective data points i.e. hometown, income, education level, etc.
• Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) Targeting – targeting audiences based on the program viewing habits on their OTT, this can be what they have historically watched or if they are currently watching a particular program/special (think Super Bowl, Masters, Wimbledon,  etc.)
• Purchasing Targeting – targeting audiences based on their historical spending habits and/or large purchase intent (credit-applications). Purchase history can be narrowed down to specific brands in most cases
• First-Party Data/CRM Activation/Lookalike Audiences – in this targeting scenario, you can take an existing database of past and/or current customers and target just them with a hyper-focused spend. The same applies to taking the ideal customers from your first-party data and doing lookalike audiences to expand reach beyond the existing pool.

NFL advertising on OTT can be made actionable

Another downside to NFL advertising on traditional broadcast is the inability to make ads actionable. This was a general disadvantage with OTT as well, in its infancy. After all, when streaming digital content (even on a smart TV), the ads aren’t exactly “clickable.” You may be wondering then, how is it that advertising on OTT can be actionable or attributable? OTT advertising may be new in the realm of advertising, but it is moving and evolving quite rapidly.

We have created solutions to address the issue. We create Geofences to give advertisers the ability to deliver retargeted ads (on other devices) to individuals who watched an OTT ad to completion. Furthermore, we can also track what actions those individuals took. This is what is capable through our tools:

• Post View Attribution – who visited the website after viewing the NFL/OTT ad
• Purchase Attribution – who made a purchase from the brand (including on Amazon) after the ad was served
• Foot Traffic Attribution – who visited the physical store location of the brand after the ad
• UPC Attribution – how many of a specific product (via universal purchase code) were purchased by those exposed to 1 or more ads
• Inferred Brand Impact – Evaluate a user’s online browsing behavior before and after ad exposure
• Offline Conversion Tracking – Match offline purchase/CRM data to users exposed to NFL advertising

The Bottom Line

2021 is a unique time for sports advertising. Not only are there special considerations and unrest due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is also election season. That has traditionally made things very tricky with political campaigns dominating all the ad spots. For those reasons, it is more important than ever for marketers to lean into OTT for their NFL advertising.

For any questions on how you can best leverage OTT for your upcoming NFL ad campaign, reach out to our team to get our thoughts.