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India is a sports powerhouse with a population of over 1 billion people. Millions of fans watch sporting events, and with high mobile phone penetration and connected TV (CTV), more fans are choosing to stream programming. By 2023, more than 30 million Indian households will own a connected TV, and it is estimated that this number will almost double by 2025.
Advertising spending has followed suit, with India’s video streaming market expected to surpass $2 billion this year. Given the rapid growth of ad-supported content and his FAST service, this is a great opportunity for publishers to capture untapped ad revenue.
This is especially true in the sports sector, which has a large audience. A whopping 85% of urban Indians regularly watch sports on various media platforms. As more Indians turn to streaming to watch their favorite matches live, publishers have the opportunity to reach addressable audiences at scale.
As publishers seek to better capitalize on live sports opportunities in India, here are some of the key hurdles they face and how they can be overcome.
Coming off the sidelines: live sports coverage in India
Real-time ad serving: There are significant risks involved in a live TV environment. There’s pressure to smoothly run campaigns in real-time to diverse audiences at various distribution points. This distribution pressure weighs heavily on publishers. A 30-second lag can mean the difference between winning and losing a game, with fans knowing the final score before it airs on the platform.
Programmatic buying: Indian publishers have traditionally been reluctant to sell their CTV inventory programmatically as they lacked the necessary programmatic tools to optimize their CTV environments. Some media owners want to “play it safe” and sell sports content through direct channels. But programmatic TV has since evolved to streamline large-scale ad buying across CTV and his OTT landscape, creating a missed opportunity for publishers who remain on the sidelines. Reliance on direct sales channels effectively limits the revenue that publishers can earn and limits advertisers’ opportunities.
Be prepared for the unforeseen: Selling ads to VOD rather than live TV requires some campaign flexibility. The number and length of ad breaks in sports broadcasts vary. For live sporting events, the length of commercial breaks depends on how long it takes to treat an injury or whether the game goes into overtime. Ideally, publishers want to boost the performance of their brands’ campaigns by airing ads during peak viewing moments: the last play of a game.
Additionally, for some events, viewership levels may be much higher than expected, which creates scaling issues that impact response times, leading to significant timeout rates, and causing ecosystem It can ripple across the board, impacting DSPs and demand partners. Missed opportunities in live TV are especially wasteful because they represent key moments of audience engagement that cannot be recreated, preventing publishers from reaping the full value of live content.
How can CTV publishers support prime-time sports coverage in India?
1. Leverage ad serving tools: Technology is changing rapidly to keep pace with CTV growth. In a digitally enabled live CTV environment, advanced distribution tools are more readily available, giving publishers more flexibility and control. Increasing demand from both direct and programmatic sources has placed an emphasis on addressing concerns related to duplication, such as continuous ads and category conflicts, so that they can be effectively resolved. Ta. For example, publishers can use ad deduplication tools at both the brand level and the category level to ensure that the same ad does not run twice during a game or to optimize ad fill rates. Media owners can take advantage of tools like Magnite’s Live Stream Acceleration (LSA), a technology designed to help CTV publishers programmatically optimize their live inventory. LSA can better manage high volumes of ad requests against live inventory, improve timeouts and ad response times, and optimize ad breaks that publishers need to monetize.
2. Take advantage of programmatic: Programmatic’s data-driven targeting capabilities allow advertisers of all sizes to take advantage of premium inventory, regardless of their budget. Programmatic demand should ideally be leveraged in conjunction with direct demand in a business-compliant manner to maximize inventory for a large and diverse pool of advertisers.
Machine learning technology is also suitable for creating perfect ad breaks and can manage ad breaks of varying lengths as time changes during a sports match. The machine takes into account the diversity of demands while providing a high-quality user experience with better results.
3. Embrace real-time data: CTV’s award trophy is its addressability. Real-time, glass-level home viewing data enables optimization and troubleshooting during sporting events, and can also be used to inform creative influence. This flexibility is even more important given that personalization is a key factor driving engagement, as 76% of streamers look to ads personalized to their lifestyle and interests. is especially valuable for reaching users and improving campaign performance.
Transformation by leveraging sports opportunities in India
At the end of the day, the rise of CTV in India is a win-win for both sports fans and media platforms. Live CTV offers publishers an unmissable opportunity to engage with a large and loyal fan base, but it has historically been more difficult for publishers to activate. By focusing on CTV-specific ad serving tools, programmatic ad buying, and real-time data, publishers can level the playing field and aim for gold in the live sports arena.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not represent the author’s views in any way. Exchange4media.com.
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