“Live” used to be simple. If something was happening now, it was live. If it wasn’t taking place at this very moment, it wasn’t.
The growth of Streaming in the last 6 years to become the dominant form of television viewing made it anything but simple to define “live.”
In today’s programmatic ecosystem, and especially across streaming, sporting events, news, and creator platforms, “live” can mean several different things, and each version of “live” has very different implications for value and buyer strategy.
To help bring clarity to this ambiguity, IAB Tech Lab’s Programmatic Supply Chain Working Group introduced new attributes to OpenRTB that are in public comment until May 26. These attributes are designed to standardize how different degrees of “liveness” are described in the bidstream, without having to share the title of the event to inform buying systems making the decisions that work for their clients’ goals.
Why “Live” Needed a Redefinition
Advertisers’ focus on “Live” is about seizing a moment with consumers. It’s about celebrating the big game, or joining fans at 9pm ET when the latest episode of the newest hit show drops. It’s about being a part of those conversations.
As more of these big moments move to streaming, and programmatic execution, the ecosystem needs finer grain signals to capture this nuance. The original definition of livestreaming is binary, it is or it isn’t streaming at this moment, but other value exists to advertisers:
- Is this the first broadcast of a piece of content?
- Is it happening in realtime?
- Is it a scheduled broadcast or Video-on-demand?
The new signals in OpenRTB help provide additional clarity in this area, without requiring the show title to be sent in the bidstream.
New ways to describe “Live” in OpenRTB
Where “Live” used to be black and white, buyers have focused on new aspects of inventory that interest them. The addition of two new fields and a change to the definition of another in OpenRTB attempts to more clearly allow for a range of big moments, or, “liveness.”
The First Category: livestream
This is probably the clearest and is often the most premium definition of “live.”
A sports game in progress. Election coverage unfolding in real time. Breaking news. A concert. The key characteristic is concurrency, as the event is happening as the impression opportunity exists.
This type of inventory creates urgency because once the moment passes, so does the value of the impression. It also means that huge amounts of budget can be consumed at this moment in time, impacting pacing and frequency capping.
In some ways livestream inventory behaves more like financial markets than traditional media planning. The value is attached to immediacy, but the inventory only has that premium value if buyers can confidently verify that immediacy in the bidstream.
The Second Category: realtime
This is where things become more nuanced. FAST channels, rolling news feeds, delayed creator streams, or always-on programming environments feature content that is streamed continuously in real time but is not actually happening as the viewer is watching.
These experiences may still feel live to viewers because they create shared viewing behavior and temporal relevance. But they do not carry the same scarcity or urgency as a live sporting event.
This is an important distinction because programmatic buyers increasingly optimize based on contextual value, not just audience reach. An NBA playoff game happening right this moment, which would be signified by both realtime=1 and livestream=1, may justify aggressive bidding and accelerated pacing. But a real-time streaming channel, signaled only by realtime=1, may justify consistency and scale instead.
Both are valuable. They are just valuable in different ways, and this OpenRTB update gives the ecosystem a cleaner way to communicate that distinction programmatically.
The Third Category: firstbroadcast
This may actually be the most interesting category. The firstbroadcast value signals that the content is airing for the first time on a scheduled basis, even if the content itself is pre-recorded. That covers a wide variety of content, including season premieres, episode debuts, scheduled releases, and exclusive launch windows.
While this content is not being broadcast as it is filmed, it is often treated as an event by viewers. These types of premieres are often heavily marketed, socially coordinated, and consumed with a kind of collective urgency that resembles live television. If you are a fan and you don’t watch it “live”, how will you be able to avoid spoilers, or debate it at the real or virtual water cooler?
From a monetization standpoint, this first-window attention carries premium value even without real-time production. Recognizing that “event-based viewing” is broader than traditional live broadcasting is a critical evolution for programmatic CTV that these new signals seek to support.
Why Does This Matter?
It’s easy to dismiss metadata discussions as plumbing-level ad tech work. But this change touches one of the most important shifts happening as Streaming and CTV become more dominant and have matured.
Ad tech has focused on identity, audience, and attribution as indications of value for many years. In streaming, value is increasingly tied to contextual timing, and so when content is consumed now matters almost as much as who is consuming it.
In the streaming ecosystem not all impressions are equal simply because they reach the same audience. A viewer during a live game-winning touchdown drive is not the same opportunity as that same viewer watching catch-up content the next day. While the audience may be identical, the moment is not.
That is ultimately what these new OpenRTB signals are trying to encode: not just what content is, but when it matters. In streaming, that increasingly defines value.
Barnaby Edwards
Sr Director, Product Marketing
IAB Tech Lab