In this thrilling sports season, Magnite is introducing a new three–part video series titled Leaders in Live. Conducted by B&T, these interviews feature industry experts discussing the power of live sports, the shift towards streaming, and how technology can help unlock numerous opportunities for agencies and advertisers to connect with audiences.
Live streaming of sports is opening up opportunities for diverse brands to advertise on TV and reach highly-engaged and valuable audiences. In the first episode of the Leaders in Live series, Nine’s Jordan King and Magnite’s Yael Millbank discuss streaming trends and technology innovations to enhance the viewing experience.
This week, Nine’s coverage of the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games will provide advertisers with more channels and opportunities to reach highly engaged sports audiences than ever before.
This is due to the power of live streaming, with more than 40 FAST channels and two dedicated Olympic linear channels that will be live-streamed 24 hours a day on BVOD, bringing the games to Australian households.
This year, Nine has broken new ground in the audiences that want to watch sport via live streaming, breaking new streaming records in its State of Origin III coverage.
“It’s the biggest year of sport for the broadcaster’s [we’ve ever seen],” Nine director of programmatic and digital sales Jordan King said. “From a BVOD and streaming perspective, audiences for the Australian Open this year are up 53 per cent, State of Origin is expected to have 40 per cent growth for the series year on year, and the women’s origin is up 159 per cent.
“We are now rolling into Paris and the Olympics where you’ve got 17 days and we are expecting the audiences to be enormous, whether they are watching live or whether they’re catching up in the morning or watching highlight shows.”
Nine’s live streaming coverage of sport is attracting advertisers that could be new to TV. The additional inventory and ability to buy targeted spots via programmatic trading enables brands with medium-sized budgets to advertise on big ticket live sports events, which previously was not possible.
“The beauty of live streaming on BVOD is that you’re able to buy ads on an impression base and you can get a smaller package,” King said. “That means a medium-sized advertiser is going to get the opportunity to run an ad in NRL grand final and State of Origin, whereas previously when it was just a single broadcast signal that was never possible.”
Yael Milbank, the managing director of Magnite ANZ, said that live sports streaming has built audiences to a scale that is attractive to brands, but surges in live streaming audiences come with a fresh set of technology challenges.
“Advertisers can reach velocity very quickly across BVOD that wasn’t there in the past,” he said. “So we have this massive amount of people that are arriving all at the same time and we haven’t seen that from a streaming perspective on video-on-demand platforms, which has often been more even in the way users turn up.”
In this video, Milbank and King discuss why live sports streaming is such an attractive proposition, the tech adjustments required to adapt to growing streaming audiences, and how Magnite and Nine collaborate to provide a seamless experience for advertisers, media owners and viewers.
Guests across the rest of the series feature experts from Seven and Kinneso, IPG Mediabrands’ performance marketing arm. Stay tuned.
Get in touch with Magnite to find out more about the live sports streaming opportunity and how it can boost your media campaign performance.
