Create Account
While athletes around the globe were competing for gold, one challenger stood out as the reigning world champion of digital ads. Making its Olympic debut this year, programmatic advertising continues to demonstrate its flexibility and dominance in the field, enabling advertisers to reach a global audience and winning mouth-watering ad revenue for NBCUniversal. Let’s take a look at Programmatic’s performance throughout the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
Programmatic’s Stunning Debut at the Games
For the first time in Olympic history, advertisers could programmatically purchase ad space for all competition events. The opening and closing ceremonies were off the cards, but any sport, big or small, was up for grabs.
Advertisers had great reason to buy where they could: Olympic viewership is back with a vengeance. This year, around 28.6 million people tuned in for the opening ceremonies alone; the last Summer Olympics in Tokyo drew in 15.6 million viewers in total. The 2024 Paris games marked an 82% increase in viewership over 2021, making this the most-streamed Olympiad of all time.
It’s been a banner event for NBC, the exclusive broadcaster for the games in the United States. On August 1st (about a week before the games finished), the company reported that advertising revenue had surpassed $1.25 billion; that’s over twice the total revenue from this year’s Super Bowl.
The Nitty-Gritty Details
Bidders Can’t Be Choosers
All Olympic inventory was sold through PMP deals (private marketplace deals) through various DSPs who had access to these PMPs. However, this Olympic inventory was limited in that you could only run RON (run of network) per say, and not choose specific games. This made live placements a little unpredictable as you did not know what sport, long or short, or what audience might be watching. Depending on how advertisers purchased this Olympic inventory, other 1st or 3rd party data could be used to target specific audience segments – more on that in a minute – but advertisers could not bid on specific events.
An Arm and a Leg?
Advertisers could bid for placements through FreeWheel (the in-house SSP of NBC’s parent company, Comcast) and other trade desks. Two basic packages were offered: Olympic Highlights (highlights and replays only), and All Olympics (Live events and replays). The highlights package started at a floor price of $40 CPM, while the complete package started at a whopping $60 CPM.
These bare-minimum floor prices are already at the high-end of average industry prices, and they surely grew to premium once the bidding was settled. Compare these prices with the Genius Monkey platform, which averages an effective CPM around $25, depending on the vertical.
New Blood
Still, those prices were welcoming enough to bring in tons of marketers who had never before advertised with the Olympics; 70% of the programmatic advertisers were brand new to the Games. This is quite the shake-up from normal advertising practices surrounding the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee has infamously strict rules regarding who and what can be shown; the programmatic marketplace opened the door to new advertisers without going through the rigmarole of becoming an official partner.
The Strengths of Programmatic on Full Display
Buying ad space from FreeWheel gave advertisers access to 1st-party data, making it pretty easy to target long-running NBC users who’ve had plenty of time to get their data collected. Buying through other trade desks, however, allowed advertisers to incorporate 3rd-party data as well for significantly better audience segmentation and targeting. Genius Monkey users, for example, benefitted from industry-leading audience affinity data, allowing advertisers unbelievably specific behavioral targeting.
Genius Monkey’s Tips for OTT Advertising
The introduction of programmatic ads at the Olympics further signals the continuing rise of OTT as an advertising powerhouse. Whether you’re an OTT vet or just starting to dip your toes into digital ads, here are a few insider tips to get better performance from your OTT ads:
- OTT/CTV ads are generally unskippable, which means you can focus a little less on content to amuse and a little more on delivering useful information to educate and entice
- Repetition is important in advertising, but excessive repetition will only win you audience annoyance. Use frequency caps to keep your brand top-of-mind while avoiding the ire of your future customers
- OTT is only one part of a good campaign. It works best when used in conjunction with display for a baseline, but even better when using all available programmatic channels for maximum impressions and the highest chance of engagement.
See You in Two!
Now for the big question: will programmatic advertising return for the next Olympic games? Nothing official has been announced at time of writing, but it is a very likely YES. NBC has enjoyed an extremely profitable 17 days, and has every incentive to continue welcoming new advertisers to share their message at the games. If you want to optimize your campaigns for efficiency and high returns, then there’s no better programmatic partner than Genius Monkey.
Boasting the latest technology and a team of seasoned experts, the Genius Monkey platform is known for delivering quality AND quantity through meaningful impressions and dramatically reduced cost-per-conversion. Contact us today to see how you can evolve your marketing strategy to the next level!
