Did the Super Bowl Increase Programmatic Revenue?
The NFL’s Super Bowl Sunday is the most important sporting calendar event in the United States. During half-time, iconic musical performances take place (this year we saw an amazing performance by Jennifer Lopez and Shakira). Half-time is also characterized by high-profile, and costly, television commercials, popularly known as Super Bowl ads. And so, whereas American football fans tune into the matches, the rest of the viewership is attracted by the razzle dazzle and the innovative nature of the never-seen-before advertisement spots. Does Super Bowl affect Programmatic revenue? Is Programmatic also celebrating its own games and eCPMs at this time reaching sky-high rates?
Nothing could be further from the truth
It has been known for a long time that one of the attributes of an advertising space is visibility, i.e. the time when viewers actually see the displayed ad. Brands constantly strive to pique the interest of viewers in these few minutes. This year, the cost of a 30-second advertising slot totalled $5.6 million. It should be remembered, however, that what is natural for programmatic advertising – i.e. aiming at the specific parameters of the user within the framework of the displayed advertisement – does not take place during the Super Bowl.
Examining advertising requests generated by cookies located in the United States, it is easy to conclude that there is no Programmatic championship. By tracking this traffic and the program revenues after hours, it becomes quite clear that there is no time or space for online advertising in these games, let alone cookies.
Comparing traffic by device, it turns out that while the level of traffic from mobile devices remains at a similar level, desktop traffic is experiencing a decrease (probably no American would take his eyes from his beloved team in favor of another monitor).
The Super Bowl and Programmatic Revenue
The described advertising landscape is a beautiful tradition, but over time it may become somewhat outdated, and since it is clear where the highly visible advertising space is located, it might be worth considering how to transfer programmatic advertising mechanisms to the monetization of such a unique inventory.
In order to visualize such an auction, we need to establish a setup, i.e. the flow of the request within the possible elements of monetization of the given advertising request. Building a cascade of an advertising request within such a valuable space is a real challenge! The leading determinant pertaining to the principles of surface monetization, where one would expect the highest eCPM values in history and the complete absence of unfilled impressions, would be the quality of the displayed advertisement. In such an unusual setup, this would exclude the existence of an open market. In this case, you would have to contend with a lack of control over the quality of displayed advertising creations, which would be associated with the depreciation of the advertising space when looking towards the future, and thus a decrease in the purchase rates for Super Bowl slots. In order to protect the show from a depreciating calorific value, you should focus on higher setup priorities (from 4 to 10), so everything that would be located under Sponsorship items (creations with high eCPM rates targeted at a specific inventory on which a given creative will appear) and Standard (similar to sponsorship, but lower-ranking priorities may compete with it). Below would be only preferred deals (12 priority), which would fill any gaps in the context of unfilled impressions; or if they had a high eCPM defined, they could limit the emission of ads served by Standard. Blinding this setup and setting anything on the 16th priority is completely unnecessary (and according to new Google information, no programmatic auction can be implemented there).
Everything described above relates to future projections, but it is worth emphasizing that each monetization of the inventory is aimed at its most effective use, which, however, is associated with the personalization and targeting of creations for a given user. It will also be important to maintain long-standing advertising traditions that attract viewership figures and showcase creativity, while making recourse to the technological possibilities resulting from the use of the the Programmatic auction. The programmatic Super Bowl will soon have its day in the sun!
AdOps Analyst
