Genius Sports brings real-time ads to programmatic

The solution combines real-time sports data, audience targeting and dynamic creative technology within StackAdapt’s advertising platform.

Genius Sports has partnered with Equativ and StackAdapt to help advertisers and agencies reach sports fans with programmatic creative that responds to live game events.

The partnership integrates Genius Sports’ Moment Engine with StackAdapt’s AI advertising platform and Equativ’s creative enhancement technology. The system uses live game data to identify high-engagement moments and allows advertisers to align their messaging with events and shifts in fan attention during a game.

Live data enters the media-buying workflow

The integration brings Moment Engine’s moment-based advertising capabilities directly into StackAdapt’s programmatic buying workflow. The combined offering uses Genius Sports’ live game signals and audiences, Equativ’s creative technology and StackAdapt’s performance buying capabilities.

Advertisers can activate campaigns through two approaches. The Genius Deal Library provides ready-to-run Genius Sports Moments audience deals in StackAdapt’s marketplace through programmatic Deal IDs, without requiring new trafficking or creative rebuilding. Genius Sports data and Equativ’s Sports Ticker technology can also add live scores and upcoming matchups to existing CTV, video or display creative.

Dynamic creative responds to game action

The Custom High-Impact option combines Equativ’s high-impact creative technology with Genius Moments to adapt campaign messaging as events unfold. Creative can respond to moments including interceptions and game-winning drives, allowing advertisements to reflect the live context experienced by fans.

Both offerings are available through StackAdapt using curated Deal IDs from Genius Sports and Equativ. Audience data determines who advertisers reach, while live game data helps determine when to engage them, allowing campaigns to align media and creative with periods of heightened fan attention and emotion.

Josh Linforth, Chief Revenue Officer, Genius Sports: "Programmatic advertising has become incredibly sophisticated at understanding who a consumer is, but live sports give marketers another powerful signal: when that consumer is most engaged," said Josh Linforth, Chief Revenue Officer at Genius Sports. "Together with Equativ and StackAdapt, we're making that intelligence easy to activate within the existing media-buying workflow, giving brands a way to respond to the game as it happens rather than simply advertise around it."

Reaching fans beyond the TV screen

The offering is designed to complement the live sports experience by reaching fans across the digital environments they use while watching. Genius Sports cites research showing that 84 percent of sports fans use a companion screen, such as a mobile device, during a broadcast.

Equativ’s research also found that sports fans are 91 percent more likely to pay attention to an advertisement featuring a relevant live score, highlighting the potential value of connecting advertising with live game context.

Frank Maguire, SVP, Product Marketing & Sustainability, Equativ: "Live sports is the most powerful emotional environment in media,” said Frank Maguire, SVP, Product Marketing & Sustainability at Equativ. “As a fan's mood shifts from tension to elation in a matter of seconds according to gameplay, an ad that ignores that shift is easy to tune out. This partnership gives advertisers a simple way to understand and activate against these moments, with dynamic creative optimization that lets brands move with the emotion of the game and deliver personalized messages contextually relevant to what they're feeling in that precise moment. That alignment is what makes an ad resonate rather than just appear, and what makes this partnership with Genius Sports and StackAdapt transcendent for the industry.”

Campaigns can run across sports seasons

The solution is also designed for always-on sports campaigns rather than only major events. Genius Sports works with more than 400 leagues and federations globally, providing data across football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, golf and other sports.

Through StackAdapt, advertisers can use this data to activate against sports audiences throughout entire seasons, extending moment-based campaigns beyond championships and playoffs.

Greg Joseph, VP, Inventory Development, StackAdapt: "Live sports creates moments of extraordinary attention, but historically it hasn’t been easy for programmatic buyers to respond to those moments as they happen," said Greg Joseph, VP, Inventory Development at StackAdapt. "By bringing Genius Sports’ live intelligence and Equativ’s creative technology directly into StackAdapt, we’re giving advertisers a simple way to make sports campaigns more responsive to the action, while keeping activation within the platform and workflow they already use."

www.geniussports.com

www.stackadapt.com

Follow Marketing Report on LinkedIn