This year, more advertisers than ever before will be vying for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
NBCU and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) are creating inventory on their Peacock streaming platform and the Eurosport website, as well as supporting apps that can be bought through their private marketplace, a PMP for programmatic advertisers.
The development could mean brands with smaller budgets can now access the Olympics' vast audience that was previously only accessible to big spenders.
“Every time the Olympics come around, all my clients ask how they can participate without being a ring holder because of the huge investment that comes with it,” said Ronnie Beach, U.S. head of sports for Wavemaker Sports, Live & Gaming, without naming any specific clients.
NBCU and WBD welcome the investment, but are also working to assure their existing roster of loyal customers that their advertising investments are not at risk of appearing alongside messages from less trustworthy advertisers.
Programmatic Experiments
Mo Chughtai, head of advanced TV at MiQ, said the 2024 Olympics could be the “ultimate case study” for programmatic buying of live sports.
Peacock will broadcast the entire Olympic schedule (more than 5,000 hours of live sports), and all advertising accompanying that broadcast will be available to buy programmatically through a partnership with ad tech provider The Trade Desk, with financial details of the deal not being disclosed.
In April, Dan Lovinger, NBCU's president of Olympic and Paralympic Partnerships, said at a press conference that the network had already surpassed its own record for digital ad revenue on its Olympics inventory, bringing in $350 million in revenue from new Olympic advertisers. NBCU declined to disclose its latest sales figures for this article, but programmatic buying likely fueled some of that demand.
“This will bring in a whole new set of advertisers,” said Verna de Jesus, vp of CTV, audio and publishers at The Trade Desk.
NBCU's live sports programming is attracting advertisers who “value real-time performance and quick understanding of performance” that previously shunned TV advertising, said Alison Levin, NBCU's president of advertising and partnerships.
At the same time, Warner Bros. Discovery, which holds broadcast rights across Europe through its Eurosport brand, has also begun to offer its Olympic broadcast inventory in its programming.
The company launched a new marketplace, WBD Connect, in May to allow advertisers to access ad inventory across CNN International Commercial (CNNIC) and WBD Sports Europe, which includes Eurosport, in partnership with ad tech vendor Magnite.
Streaming advertising on Eurosport, WBD's streaming platforms Max and discovery+ will not be available to buy programmatically, but the publisher plans to place ads on Eurosport's website and apps.
While declining to disclose revenue figures, Mike Ricci, senior vice president of advertising sales and brand partnerships for the UK, Ireland and international division at WBD Group, said nine new FMCG and B2B brand clients have booked Olympic ads programmatically on the site so far. At press time, more than 20 advertisers had booked ads with the publisher. “We're seeing a lot of interest in the Olympics beyond just our traditional clients and IOC sponsors,” he said, without naming names.
Admission fees will be reduced
Previously, Olympic broadcast advertising was too expensive for all but the largest advertisers to get in. Chughtai said programmatic advertising's lower price of entry is stimulating new demand from brands with smaller budgets.
“We’re seeing a lot of excitement from brands that never thought about Olympic packaging or sponsorship,” he said. Sarah Karges, svp of biddable media at Havas Media Group, told Digiday that Peacock’s programmatic advertising means a “historically premium space” at the Olympics has opened up to smaller brands.
For Ronen Benatar, portfolio investment leader and group director at Wavemaker US, programmatic advertising “democratizes” the Olympic advertising opportunity. “The Olympics is a very exclusive offering. Traditionally, you have a very exclusive set of clients that participate. I'm really impressed that NBC has done this because I think it increases accessibility,” he said.
A more diverse ad base might also make it less likely that viewers will see the same spots multiple times during ad breaks. But big-budget brands also advertise on Peacock and “pay a premium to get into the exclusive areas,” Chughtai said. Should they be worried about Peacock and Eurosport letting the general public in through a programmatic side entrance?
Visa, a commercial partner of the International Olympic Committee for 38 years, will advertise on Peacock through a separate channel.
“We don't do programmatic buying,” Mary Ann Reilly, North America CMO at the payments company, told Digiday, adding that Visa will run ads on linear TV, Peacock and NBC's Snapchat channel, as well as a branded film produced in collaboration with the broadcaster to coincide with the Olympic surfing events in Tahiti, French Polynesia.
“With $1 billion worth of advertising being delivered in 14 days, we’re going to see a lot of advertisers get in,” said Jeff Gagne, svp at Havas Media.
Reilly said Visa's exclusivity deal provides the right level of brand protection — the company is NBC's exclusive “payments partner” for the Olympics, and the deal means competitors can't advertise on the same channel as Visa — so he's not worried that the entry of smaller advertisers will push Peacock out of the premium environment, he said.
“There's no need to worry about that,” Riley said. “Big advertisers will decide to take a more holistic view.”
Wavemaker's Beach said he hasn't received any quality control concerns from clients, and in any case, NBCU aims to preempt any concerns with its AI-powered screening system.
“We wanted to make sure that whatever we did in this programmatic environment, there were no inconsistencies,” NBCU's Lobinger told Digiday. The broadcaster partnered with AI and visual learning software company Hive to automate the ad review process. If Hive's systems detect any visual or scripted elements that violate NBCU or the IOC's advertising rules, they are flagged for human moderation.
“They can look at a spot and very quickly determine if that spot is likely to conflict with an existing sponsor,” Lobinger said. “Without that, it would be nearly impossible for us to even go down this path, so we're excited to bring this new technology into the largest possible environment, which is sports,” he added.
Like NBCU, the majority of WBD's inventory is available through PMPs, but the company also offers limited inventory on the open market through pre-bidding and in-app mediation. Luke Worley, senior director of global digital ad sales for Sports & Entertainment, said the majority of the company's programmatic deals are bought direct, allowing its compliance and operations teams to ensure ads meet the IOC's rules and its own standards in advance. “We have the luxury of seeing what's coming down the line,” he said.
The game is just the beginning
NBCU has already credited live sports streaming with attracting new advertisers to its portfolio. Levin told Digiday that the number of advertisers spending on live sports increased 87% last year, but declined to provide a baseline figure. The company hopes that programmatic inventory will be an onramp to larger investments from those clients, he added. “That's when they come in and buy sponsorships, buy the bigger moments.”
Havas' Karges expects more sporting events to become available to programmatic buyers. “I'm confident that we'll continue to see publishers, premium publishers, premium opportunities become available in programmatic,” she said. The demand from marketers is already there, but the challenge for media owners is to prove that their technology solutions and demand-side platforms can play a role, she said. “If we have great success with the Olympic campaign this year, then we'll see a lot of growth.” [demand] It will continue to grow,” she added.
Chughtai also hopes this year's Olympics will be a milestone for the use of programmatic advertising in other sports, including the NBA, whose rights are still being negotiated between the league and rivals NBC and Warner Bros.
“You have to assume that every streamer and league is looking for ways to increase their average hourly revenue from advertising,” he said.
“There's still a lot of room for growth in this world. Any league looking at its revenue mix needs to look at all options.”
