Olympic Shift: Streaming’s moment to redefine TV advertising

The 2024 Olympic Games in Paris could be the most watched televised event in the past eight years according to at least one forecast. And many of those viewers will tune in on streaming channels. In the US, Peacock has streaming rights to the entire Olympic Games, and will stream everything live in addition to interviews and other behind the scenes content — creating more than 10,000 hours of content. In the UK the BBC will stream extra content on their streaming app iPlayer to ensure viewers can access a broader variety of content, potentially getting a new wave of people to embrace streaming.

For advertisers, the Olympics represents a major turning point in TV advertising. As linear loses ground to streaming, the Olympics showcases what the future of advertising will look like, combining targeting and personalized messaging with data and insights at scale.

A new era in TV advertising

In the days when linear ruled the TV, advertisers had few levers to pull. They needed to commit to media placements well ahead of time, and had little variety with what creative they showed different people. Linear also provides little feedback in terms of engagement, viewership or even audience makeup.

Streaming changes many of those variables. With so many hours of content to pick from and so many different people watching, media companies can showcase their data-driven capabilities on streaming. Advertisers won’t get to cherry-pick every single ad slot — the most popular live events are more lucrative for media companies when they sell them up front in the old linear style. However, there are tons of opportunities to create a data-driven campaign that is targeted and contextually relevant outside of those big events.

Media companies like Peacock offer everything from linear-like prime time ad spots to highly targeted, dynamic options for less popular content that benefits from more specific messaging. Advertisers might have a branding campaign that has general appeal during the women’s gymnastics finals, but instead use targeted messaging for people watching a rugby match early in the morning.

In either case, advertisers have the ability to target creative much more effectively. They could feature an ad with a specific athlete after their live performance, for example. Campaigns can be adjusted based on real-time viewership data to optimize delivery. Media companies will also be able to share more details about ad viewership and performance. Streaming allows media companies to know more about who is watching, when and if they are engaged or not. In fact, advertisers can even test out interactive ads, which allow viewers to engage with ad content or even click and navigate to a website.

Taking the Olympics into the future

Streaming platforms have a chance to lean into the unique attributes of advertising on this interactive channel. While they like to sell some streaming inventory up front for a premium when they know they will get a large captive audience, they are still working to maximize the value of their longer tail content. Getting advertisers to understand all of the opportunities available to target audiences, create contextually relevant creative, and adjust campaign delivery in real time will help them maximize the value of streaming well into the future.

Streamers are also learning a lot about their audiences during the Olympics. Everyone will be watching Peacock to see how viewers interact with their content hub app, which provides a highly personalized viewing experience. Streamers are still experimenting with the right ratio of ad content, especially as many balance subscription, ad-supported and FAST options. Streamers are also observing viewer behavior. They don’t yet know how much viewers are willing to engage with ads in different environments such as a display ad on the content selection screen vs. a targeted commercial during live content because it is such a new behavior.

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The Olympics is an opportunity for streamers to train viewers to lean in and engage with content and ads to get a more personalized and interesting experience. It’s also a time to turn advertisers on to all of the creative ways they can engage with their audiences, and take advantage of the data, targeting and insights (not to mention interactivity) that streaming provides.

It is up to streamers to show both viewers and advertisers that they can do much more on streaming than they ever could on linear broadcast. While the Olympics is just a few weeks long, it will change the way both audiences think about streaming well into the future.

David Dembowski, OperativeDavid is the senior vice president of global sales at Operative, working with his team to forge strong relationships with media companies around the world. He brings over 20 years of leadership experience with media and technology companies, including Operative, Standard Media Index, IgnitionOne, and Yahoo.