TV Advertising Snapshot Shows Why All Sports Will Become Streaming

Remember what happened last year in Week 7 of the NFL? How about clips 2-6 on your scroll this morning? Me neither.

But remember those ads that you couldn’t escape because you held the scroll for a second or how much Peyton Manning won’t go away while you’re just chilling on the couch? Yea, me too.

Today, 100 million+ of TVs in America and even more mobile phones will turn on to consume ad-supported video content. The vast majority of that content will be folded into an abyss of things we forget, and yet from that millions of purchases will ensue.

And somewhere between all those forgotten moments there will be characters we do remember and start to trust, the coach and quarterback, the helpful creator, and a house full of products we learned about in our journey.

It all adds up.

iSpot’s Q3 Ad report that shows while linear TV still dominates ad impression volume on the back of live sports when compared to streaming ad revenues are now split evenly.

However, streaming is proving to be a much more reliable format for driving outcomes.

Maybe it’s the targeting. Maybe it’s the captive nature of streaming apps which make flipping away from ads much harder than linear. Surely, it's both to some degree.

Either way, it makes me wonder with evidence like this how long the NFL, MLB, (W)NBA will stay in low performing linear environments when clearly the performance money and provable publisher ROI is in streaming.