MediaPost: "The Big Game's Fumble: Missed Opportunities On Connected TV"

Tim Sims, SVP of Inventory Partnerships, contributed an article to MediaPost highlighting the missed opportunity for advertisers at this year's Superbowl. You can read the entire article here.

This year's Superbowl brought in an estimated $414 million in advertising revenue and represented a crucial opportunity for digital advertising.

According to Nielsen, although the Big Game had a 7% drop in viewership from last year’s game, averaging 103.4M viewers, Sunday’s game was still the most live-streamed ever. It delivered an audience of 2.02 million viewers per minute across a number of apps, including the NBC Sports app, NBCSports.com, NBC.com En Vivo app, NFL.com NFL Mobile from Verizon, the Yahoo Sports app, and go90.

It offered a chance for publishers to maximize the value of their connected TV inventory, for brands to reach audiences with high impact messages, and for consumers to receive relevant advertising. But instead of a triple win, the industry fumbled.

Throughout the event, the 2 million fans streaming the game often found themselves staring at a static screen during many commercial breaks.

The Trade Desk’s internal viewing team found that nearly 30% of the commercial breaks included unfilled commercial slots. This represents a perfect opportunity to revisit the long-standing selling methods of TV selling, or specifically, the Upfronts.

Programmatic technology changes the game for advertising on digitally-streamed content – emphasizing specific targeting with audience insights instead of demographics, providing an auction to deliver the best price on scarce inventory, and granular audience data to use across your other digital channels.

The publisher gets the most out of their ad real-estate, the brand engages their specific target audience, and the consumer gets more relevant advertising.