POV

It’s no secret that live sports are a hot commodity in advertising. As streaming fragments the media landscape, sports remain one of the last bastions of appointment viewing, reliably delivering scale, cultural relevance, and audience attention. But as brands flood into live events - whether it’s the Olympics, NFL season, or a blockbuster college football weekend - the conversation often stops short of the one thing that should matter most: outcomes.

Yes, the CPMs are high. Yes, the reach is impressive. But if you can’t answer who you reached, when, and what happened after, then you’re not buying performance - you’re buying prestige. There’s a long-standing assumption in media that premium content delivers premium value. But without the right data, even the most expensive placements are just a shot in the dark. Marketers have grown comfortable using the word “performance” while optimizing against proxy metrics - reach, frequency, attention, and even brand lift - none of which tell us if a campaign actually moved product.

This problem becomes especially acute in sports, where advertisers face a unique mix of challenges: time-bound inventory, fluctuating audience sizes, regional variations, and emotionally driven spikes in engagement. These are powerful dynamics, but they’re only valuable if they can be measured and acted upon in real time.

Sports viewing doesn’t follow a predictable pattern. The second quarter of a football game doesn’t deliver the same engagement or the same audience composition as a tied fourth quarter. A mid-season MLB game draws different viewers than a playoff run. Even in tentpole events like the Super Bowl, in-game moments create microbursts of attention that are vastly more valuable than others. Without granular timestamped data, advertisers are flying blind.

We don’t just need to know if someone saw an ad - we need to know when they saw it, what their mindset was, and whether it contributed to a business outcome. That kind of intelligence can’t be reverse-engineered from end-of-month dashboards. It has to be captured in real time, while campaigns are still live and optimizable.

The Audience Composition Trap

Another trap sports advertisers fall into is treating audience composition as a constant. It’s not. The audience for a Sunday night NFL game in October is different from the one in December. Demographics shift, household co-viewing changes, and even device mix varies over the course of a single game.

Granular audience data, rooted in real-time, permissioned behavioral signals, can help marketers move beyond generic “sports fan” targeting to dynamic segmentation based on purchase behavior, brand affinity, and in-market intent. If you’re running the same ad to the same audience throughout an entire event, you’re not capitalizing on what makes live sports so valuable in the first place.

Ultimately, the value of any media investment comes down to one question: did it drive a meaningful outcome? Not clicks. Not video completes. Not even site visits. Actual business results: sales lift, new customer acquisition, incremental revenue.

With real-time outcome data, marketers can move from measuring success after the campaign to optimizing during it. They can identify which spots are working, shift dollars in flight, and tie exposure directly to revenue. That’s how you turn premium inventory into smart investment.

The industry doesn’t need more hype about the “halo effect” of live sports. It needs smarter data infrastructure to support more accountable decision-making. That means shedding our reliance on proxy metrics, embracing real-time optimization, and demanding outcome-level transparency from every media partner - no matter how premium the placement.

Because in a market defined by accountability and results, even the most premium media buy is only as good as the data behind it. The industry needs a smarter, outcome-driven approach to data and measurement. That begins with investing in truth rather than proxies, anchoring optimization in deterministic signals like purchases, instead of relying on directional metrics such as clicks or visits. It also means closing the loop between data and activation by ensuring insights can be seamlessly applied across channels with the agility to test, learn, and optimize in real time.

Measurement, too, has to evolve from being episodic to continuous, shifting away from static, post-campaign reports toward always-on tracking that allows dollars to be reallocated while campaigns are still live. Just as important is the need for interoperability: breaking down silos so that data flows across walled gardens, DSPs, and publishers to provide a unified view of performance. And finally, the industry must embed a culture of incrementality, where outcome-based KPIs and lift testing become the default standard for evaluating success.

Live sports will always command attention, but attention alone isn’t enough. By modernizing how data is captured, connected, and applied, marketers can turn premium inventory into true performance investment. When the time comes to talk about hard numbers and accountability, the proof will be there for all to see.