Advertisers pay significant premiums to appear alongside the NFL. But those rates are primarily based on average-minute audience figures which smooth out the large audience swings that can occur over the course of any game.
iSpot’s recent report, The Unified NFL TV & Video Ad Playbook, highlights just how important second-by-second ad measurement becomes for sports—especially as games increasingly appear in streaming environments that feature dynamic ad insertion.
The chart above is one of many examples of how game audiences fluctuate during blowouts.
Here, during a primetime NFL game, the average-minute audience (what most are buying on) is about 23 million P2+ impressions. But 18 different brands—36% of all game advertisers—only ran ads from pod 14 through the final whistle, when audiences were well short of that mark.
Ads appearing during those later pods were short an aggregate 209 million impressions vs. average-minute audience figures. And those reduced ad exposures also reduced opportunities for outcomes during NFL games that can deliver high conversion rates at scale.
This dynamic also works in the other direction, where close games can actually gain audience over time, and thus, gain ad reach. Understanding these trends allows publishers to maximize the value of pods throughout the game, based on who’s actually watching (and not just averages).
Don’t get stuck calling the wrong plays during the NFL season. Download our Unified NFL TV & Video Ad Playbook today, and get in touch with iSpot to understand the metrics redefining the discussion around TV advertising during sports.