Sports remain one of the few content offerings with a fixed volume of inventory, which consequently makes it of particular value at the NewFronts, said Gina Waldhorn, chief marketing officer at Sports Innovation Lab.
Conversations surrounding the future of sports rights packages like the NBA, as well as a surge in popularity around women’s sports, have brought the appeal of sports inventory into clear focus over the last several years.
“Sports are going to play a massive role in moving audiences from linear to CTV,” Waldhorn said. “We’ve reached a tipping point, which was evidenced by the number of new brands and agencies that showed up this year to explore investment.”
Incorporating AI
At Meta, video has moved from an emerging channel to its dominant medium: 60% of time spent on Instagram and Facebook now occurs on Reels, according to Alvin Bowles, vice president of global business group for the Americas.
The company stressed the outsize role AI has played in growing its video business, both for consumers and advertisers. Meta has long embraced the technology for improving its content recommendation tools, an algorithm whose efficacy is key to the short-form video experience.
But it has also woven Gen AI into ad creative and campaign operations. Meta specifically touted its image-expansion tool, which allows brands to create multiple versions of an ad using a single piece of creative, then optimize for performance based on which creative resonates most.
“At our Newfront, we talked about AI being the driving force for innovation and how to embrace that,” Bowles said. “It allows us to take mundane tasks off the plate of people doing hard work.”
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