ORLANDO, Fl – The availability of NFL games on streaming platforms has surged by 50% annually for the past three years – and this coming season, over half of all NFL games will be available to stream. But while this brings together the best of TV and digital, it also presents a new challenge for marketers.

“How do they take what has historically been a linear-only medium and adapt it for this new digital age?,” Dan Mouradian, SVP of Global Client Solutions at Innovid, asked in this video interview with Beet.TV.

He thinks the opportunity lies in applying digital best practices to the largest screen in the home. “Those include things like dynamic ads, being able to personalize the experience based on location or weather or time of day, or even the score in the game can be used as signal to create a more personalized experience,” Mouradian said.

Data Optimizes Live Ads

Innovid is a technology company that offers an advertising and analytics platform focused on delivering video ads across television and digital environments.

Innovid serves about 1.3 billion ad impressions per day, just over half of which end up on CTV devices. The data generated with each impression – things like device, video aspect ratio, and duration – can be categorized into actionable insights like household reach.

“When you think about live specifically and live sports specifically, the availability of data, the mobility of that data and the opportunity to optimize against performance metrics in real-time is a huge opportunity for marketers who are choosing to advertise on live sports that are being streamed digitally,” Mouradian said.

Because this data comes in on every single impression, Innovid is able to take action against it in real-time. That could mean changing the creative message, A/B testing different creatives, or adjusting creative weights and rotations based on performance indicators like QR code scans or website purchases.

“There’s a lot of opportunity to be had in terms of optimization specifically because TV is now a digital medium,” Mouradian said.

Interactivity Collapses The Funnel

Another key opportunity is around interactivity, which Innovid has working on with retail media partners like Target’s Roundel.

“With a shoppable ad, you can showcase a product, you can talk about the features and the benefits of that product like you would in a brand building experience, but then you can also create leads or drive the user to purchase,” Mouradian explained.

Innovid’s annual “CTV x Commerce” report, which was published in the summer and looks at Target guests’ streaming behaviors and shoppable ad formats, has found that QR codes can significantly shorten the purchase funnel when integrated with Target’s add-to-cart API. Rather than just sending users to a product page, scanning the code places the showcased product directly into their cart.

You’re watching “The CMO’s Guide to CTV Advertising in 2025 & Beyond”, a Beet.TV Leadership Series at ANA Masters of Marketing 2024, presented by Innovid. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.

By Robert Andrews on    @robertandrews