Tim Sewell of Yospace explains when the hotspots are for ad-breaks during a football match and how broadcasters can capitalise of these opportunities
In football, the ad break just before kick-off is often seen as prime real estate. Logic would then suggest that the most valuable ad spot during Euro 2024 will be right before the highest profile match - the final - begins. But the world of international football isn’t that predictable. The real gold mine for advertisers lies in the nail-biting unpredictability of football, particularly penalty shoot-outs.
Take the Morocco and Spain clash at the 2022 World Cup, which was surprisingly 0-0 after not just 90 minutes but after extra time too. As tension mounted, so did viewer numbers – aaudience figures can grow 2x or more between the final whistle and the first penalty kick.
Morocco and Spain’s cliffhanger penalty shoot-out drew millions of additional viewers, drawn by the sudden jeopardy facing one of the tournament favourites. For broadcasters, this unscheduled moment of high drama created an unplanned yet massively valuable ad break right before penalties began.
Monetising these spontaneous, high-stakes moments presents a complex challenge. Delivering one-to-one ad addressability and millions of simultaneous ad calls at scale is challenging even during predictable breaks, such as at half-time, but during unpredictable moments like penalty shoot-outs, the complexity multiplies.
With millions of additional viewers tuning in over a very short space of time, the server-side ad insertion (SSAI) system must manage each additional stream as it triggers ad calls that must be processed and delivered in real-time without room for error.
A “just-in-time” strategy to ad calls wouldn’t give Ad Decisioning Servers (ADS) and onward programmatic adtech (SSPs & DSPs) enough time to respond, meaning such highly valuable ad spots risk going unfilled, simply because the ad insertion system did not receive a response in time. Vital revenue opportunities would be missed and the viewer experience would be poor as they would see a blank slate instead of ads.
The solution to the ad server overload problem is deceptively simple – rather than waiting until the last moment, ad requests are made in advance with dynamic prefetching. Using such a prefetch strategy—fetching the ad before the actual point-in-time of the ad break itself—paces the requests over a longer period, smoothing out the ad delivery process during both scheduled and unscheduled breaks.
Unscheduled breaks, such as those during penalty shoot-outs, are the most difficult to handle with traditional prefetch systems. One solution would be to use some of the ads from the next scheduled break. However, they may be the wrong length and an advertiser may have paid for their ad to appear in a specific break. Leading dynamic prefetching technology can create contingency ad pods in the background, allowing broadcasters to fill these unscheduled breaks effectively without disrupting the planned ad schedule.
This advanced ad management system works in coordination with real-time campaign management, automating processes that would otherwise be manual and labour-intensive.
Moreover, real-time tracking of ad views provides broadcasters with accurate data to analyse ad performance and make ad campaign adjustments on the fly. This constant cycle of ad operations, based on live performance data, allows broadcasters to optimise ad delivery by continuously tweaking and monitoring their campaigns to maximise fill-rates and ad revenue.
As Euro 2024 approaches, the lesson is clear: expect the unexpected. The more rights-holders anticipate the unpredictable nature of sport in a live digital advertising world, the greater the opportunity to turn these high-stakes moments into advertising gold.
Tim Sewell is CEO of Yospace
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