Real-time games and events draw large audiences that are highly engaged and attentive. Hence, advertising during live sports is a sought-after way for brands to reach their audiences. Live sports campaigns are ideal for you if you have dedicated budgets to spend on live sporting events.

Admatx through The Trade Desk has a  pacing model that helps you maximize spend against live sports events when you have dedicated budgets for these opportunities.

Here is how the pacing model works for live sports campaigns:

• Live sports viewership during events fluctuates dramatically with the spikes and lulls of viewers tuning in. Our platform automatically activates the new pacing system to bid more effectively when there is variability in viewership when the following conditions are met:
  • Your tactic is targeting live sports inventory. This means that the private contract in the platform runs against live sports or live events only.
  • Your tactic pacing is set to pace as soon as possible.

The platform considers campaign inputs such as total budget, remaining budget, flight dates, provisional wins, and expiration times of bids across relevant data centers and calculates a biddable allowance amount.

Campaigns on our platform can safely bid immediately and more often during periods of spike in viewership during live sports events, which helps maximize bidding opportunities.

Requirements for Live Sports Campaigns

Here are the requirements for running live sports campaigns in the platform.

• Create separate tactic for live sports. For a new tactic, make sure the setup is completed and the tactic is enabled at least three hours before game time.
• Your tactic is targeting live sports inventory. This means that the private contract in the platform runs against live sports or live events only.
• Your tactic pacing is set to pace as soon as possible.

Live Sports Campaign Best Practices

Here are some best practices for setting up live sports campaigns. Be sure to see the requirements for running live sports campaigns.

• Campaign: You can use an existing campaign but create a separate tactic for live sports. We recommend you set up separate live sports campaigns to have designated budgets and maximize spend against available live sports opportunities.
• Tactics: If you have a set budget per day, add a daily target.
• Audience: Set a broad audience, such as a demographic audience.
• Budget: Fixed budgets are preferred. However, if your budget is fluid, we recommend you disable AutoAllocator (see support for help). We also recommend turning off Predictive Clearing to ensure we're bidding the right amount across the event.
• Flights: For new ad groups, set the flight to start approximately one hour before game time. This ensure we can start bidding at game time.
• Frequency: Do not use frequency goals.
• Geo targeting: Use large geos to maximize opportunities. Smaller geos can have a difficult time scaling.
• Device targeting: Target all devices to get maximum scale.
• Ensure that your bid cost per mille (CPM) is high enough because live sports inventory tends to have higher CPMs.

Creatives:

• Make sure you're running with a creative that has already been approved.
• If it's a new creative, run a test before game time to ensure it's good to go.

Live Sport Campaigns FAQs

Here are the answers to your frequently asked questions about live sports campaigns.

• Should I use pace evenly if i'm looking to maximize spend against a short event? No. For short live sports events, if you want to maximize spend using the new pacing system, you must set ad groups to pace as soon as possible.
• Do all my tactics need to pace as soon as possible in the campaign running against live sports? No. We support tactics with mixed pacing settings. Only the tactics set to pace as soon as possible can use the live sport pacing model. If you have mixed pacing settings for the tactics in your live sports campaign, give the live sports ad group its own budget
• If a tactic is using a mix of live sports contracts and non-live sports contracts, can it use the new pacing system? No. For the tactics to use the new pacing model, all contracts must be marked as live sports contracts.

See The Trade Desk's article One-upping the competition with live sports on Connected TV