Sports audiences have never been more valuable—or more fragmented. How can advertisers move beyond simple reach to understand how specific game moments influence consumer behavior? In this Measurement Mavens, Andrew King, SVP of Product at Genius Sports, discusses how real-time sports data can help advertisers identify the right moments to reach fans based on what is happening on the field and how they are feeling in the moment.
Genius Sports, one of the world’s largest sports tech companies, works with iSpot to understand fans’ media behavior and the importance of timing for a campaign’s success, so we wanted to chat with King in the run-up to the official start of the NFL season, as brands prep with iSpot’s latest pre-season intelligence, showing how advertisers can connect game-day exposure, creative and audience strategy to measurable outcomes.
Watch the full interview:
This conversation has been lightly condensed and edited for clarity.
How can sports data identify the right advertising moment?
Andrew King: There’s three areas that we really focus closely on. One is the speed and accuracy of our data signals: how fast can we detect what’s happening in a game, and how deeply can we understand what that event means. Not all touchdowns are equal.
The second piece is we then have to match that to audiences and inventory. So it’s one thing to know that this event changes the win probability, or the momentum of the game. It’s something entirely different to know that Fan A is going to feel joy over that, and Fan B is going to feel despair, and knowing exactly when to reach those fans in that emotional state is really important for advertisers.
Finally, the third thing is then we map that to asking, “How does that actually impact consumer behavior?” For brands to be able to get in front of an audience that is experiencing an emotional state and are likely to take an action that is a huge, intense signal, that is going to drive consumer behavior.
How do you use iSpot?
Andrew King: iSpot is a partner that helps us track the media consumption of our fans. Knowing when fans win or lose, what they do, what actions they take, etc. Do they watch different types of shows? Do they stay on the content for more time or less, based on their emotional state? How do we actually match whether or not delivering an ad to them in that emotional state drives that consumer behavior?
What separates a good campaign from a great one?
Andrew King: Everyone who has worked in marketing is familiar with the conversion funnel. And the nice thing about the conversion funnel is it’s really simple, right? You see there’s awareness down to intent or interest and all the way down to adoption, loyalty, and advocacy. It’s very similar with advertising campaigns.
We have this baseline hygiene of, ”Are we reaching the target audience in a premium environment?” That is a great signal into the next rung, which is engagement. Are people engaging with the ad? Are they searching for the product? Are they interacting on social? Which then signals the outcomes of, ”Do they actually take the action we intend them to take, whether it’s subscribing or going to a store, and actually physically converting and buying a product?”
The way we work with iSpot is, they really help understand that journey, because the insight is almost as valuable as the outcome. Just knowing that a campaign worked is great, but what is even better is saying, ”We know that when we reach the fan that just won a game, they take this action differently from a fan that did not experience the same emotional high.”
Having that insight changes the way brands can communicate to the fans, changes the creative strategy, and changes the way they think about how they should pace their campaign altogether. It really shifts the question from, ”Did this campaign work?” to ”Did reaching them in this emotional state drive the behavior we wanted to drive?”
The difference between a good campaign and a great campaign is timing.
Any advice to the younger generations looking to go into the advertising industry?
Andrew King: Be a student of how consumer behavior is changing. Nobody has a crystal ball on how the advertising ecosystem is going to change over the next few years. Obviously there’s media disruption, there’s technology disruption. The conventional wisdom when I joined advertising was where consumer attention goes, ad dollars follow, which is still true today.
But because everything is being disrupted, it’s all going to come back to, how do consumers get influenced, how do they make purchase decisions, and where do they actually make purchases? Everything will work backwards from that. However the landscape shifts over the next few years, you’ll be well grounded to understand that the end outcome is to influence purchase behavior and drive community and adoption of products.