The latest blog post from Index Exchange gives a great outline of the problem statements as they relate to programmatic-ing (technical term) in live environments. The reality is that this stuff is hard. The good news is that this is an industry full of smart people who want to solve problems and, when there are issues that become annoying to a large enough group of people, there’s an awful lot of brain power to find solutions.
At its core, the Live Event Ad Serving Sub-Working Group aims to address the following areas:
- When a live event is occurring, how many devices are streaming that event so I can scale my technology to handle the traffic?
- How do I know about live events that are coming up and their expected stream count?
- How do we make every available impression opportunity in a live event biddable?
- How can I be sure that the creatives are compatible with the inventory when the live event is happening?
Today we are thrilled to open Public Comment for the first in a set of APIs, all of which sit outside OpenRTB, that help enable describing inventory, scaling technology, and bidding on Live Events. We’re calling the kit-and-caboodle the Live Event Ad Playbook (LEAP). Public Comment is open until July 14, 2025.
As the first deliverable from that group, the Concurrent Streams API aims to give a standard way for subscribers to ask ‘how many viewers are in a stream?’ when a live event is occurring. Basically, how many devices are actually streaming the piece of content that’s happening in real time. While that may sound simple, in practice this is a huge step towards automating the live event ad process. In today’s ecosystem, these types of questions are asked and answered via email. With no direct connection to the systems that need to scale based on the answer. Helping programmatic systems appropriately scale to accommodate the traffic spikes of live events is one of the fastest ways to prove live is ready for programmatic-ing. These traffic influxes are part and parcel of what makes live events a cornerstone of advertising. The innovations coming from the Live Event Ad Serving Sub-Working Group aim to make it a more programmatically predictable one.
The timing of this new API, alongside new attributes in OpenRTB is not an accident. The industry is demanding standards for executing in live environments. You’ll see some of that within OpenRTB, where the new attributes provide information that can be used alongside the existing `livestream` attribute to better describe the kind of content in the bidstream. You’ll see even more CTV standardization coming in the way CTV ads are described, with the Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group picking up work to standardize the request/response protocol to describe and bid on formats that were identified as being part of the new CTV Ad Portfolio coming later this year as a result of the Ad Format Hero initiative.
We’ve heard the industry loud and clear on this: enabling programmatic in CTV environments, especially for live programs, is a priority. We’ll tackle components of creative, live event mechanics, and more and as you should know by now, standardization is a group effort. All hands are on deck. And if you want to talk about it in person, there will be a dedicated breakout session at the 2025 Tech Lab Summit on June 4.
Hillary Slattery
Sr. Director, Programmatic, Product Management
IAB Tech Lab